Is There a Way to Tell What App Is Giving Notifications? Android

A notification is a message that Android displays outside your app'southward UI to provide the user with reminders, communication from other people, or other timely data from your app. Users can tap the notification to open your app or take an activeness direct from the notification.

This page provides an overview of where notifications appear and the available features. If you want to outset building your notifications, instead read Create a Notification.

For more information near the design and interaction patterns, come across the Notifications design guide. Additionally, meet the Android Notifications Sample for a sit-in of best practices in using the Notification.Style API in both mobile and clothing apps.

Appearances on a device

Notifications appear to users in different locations and formats, such as an icon in the status bar, a more than detailed entry in the notification drawer, as a badge on the app'due south icon, and on paired wearables automatically.

Status bar and notification drawer

When you lot result a notification, information technology showtime appears as an icon in the status bar.

Figure 1. Notification icons appear on the left side of the condition bar

Users tin can swipe downward on the status bar to open up the notification drawer, where they can view more than details and take actions with the notification.

Effigy ii. Notifications in the notification drawer

Users can drag down on a notification in the drawer to reveal the expanded view, which shows additional content and activeness buttons, if provided.

A notification remains visible in the notification drawer until dismissed by the app or the user.

Heads-up notification

Beginning with Android 5.0, notifications can briefly appear in a floating window called a heads-up notification. This behavior is normally for of import notifications that the user should know about immediately, and it appears only if the device is unlocked.

Effigy iii. A heads-up notification appears in front of the foreground app

The heads-up notification appears the moment your app issues the notification and it disappears later on a moment, but remains visible in the notification drawer as usual.

Instance conditions that might trigger heads-up notifications include the following:

The user's activeness is in fullscreen mode (the app uses fullScreenIntent).
The notification has high priority and uses ringtones or vibrations on devices running Android 7.i (API level 25) and lower.
The notification channel has high importance on devices running Android viii.0 (API level 26) and higher.

Lock screen

Get-go with Android 5.0, notifications can appear on the lock screen.

You tin programmatically ready the level of detail visible in notifications posted past your app on a secure lock screen, or even whether the notification will show on the lock screen at all.

Users can utilise the system settings to choose the level of item visible in lock screen notifications, including the option to disable all lock screen notifications. Starting with Android eight.0, users can choose to disable or enable lock screen notifications for each notification channel.

Effigy 4. Notifications on the lock screen with sensitive content subconscious

To learn more than, see how to Set up lock screen visibility.

App icon badge

In supported launchers on devices running Android 8.0 (API level 26) and higher, app icons point new notifications with a colored "badge" (also known as a "notification dot") on the corresponding app launcher icon.

Users can long-printing on an app icon to meet the notifications for that app. Users can and then dismiss or act on notifications from that carte du jour, similar to the notification drawer.

Figure v. Notification badges and the long-press menu

To learn more about how badges work, read Notification badges.

Clothing Bone devices

If the user has a paired Article of clothing OS device, all your notifications appear in that location automatically, including expandable detail and activeness buttons.

Yous can also enhance the experience by customizing some appearances for the notification on wearables and provide different actions, including suggested replies and voice input replies. For more data, encounter how to add habiliment-specific features to your notification.

Figure 6. Notifications automatically appear on a paired Wear Os device

Notification beefcake

The pattern of a notification is determined by arrangement templates—your app only defines the contents for each portion of the template. Some details of the notification appear only in the expanded view.

Figure 7. A notification with bones details

The virtually common parts of a notification are indicated in figure seven as follows:

Small icon: This is required and set with setSmallIcon().
App name: This is provided by the organization.
Time stamp: This is provided by the system just you tin can override with setWhen() or hide it with setShowWhen(false).
Big icon: This is optional (usually used only for contact photos; practise non utilise it for your app icon) and set with setLargeIcon().
Title: This is optional and set with setContentTitle().
Text: This is optional and ready with setContentText().

Nosotros strongly recommend using arrangement templates to ensure proper design compatibility on all devices. If necessary, however, you can create a custom notification layout.

For more information about how to create a notification with these features and more than, read Create a Notification.

Notification deportment

Although it'due south not required, every notification should open an appropriate app activity when tapped. In improver to this default notification action, you can add action buttons that complete an app-related task from the notification (often without opening an activity), as shown in figure 9.

Figure nine. A notification with action buttons

Starting in Android vii.0 (API level 24), y'all tin can also add an action to reply to letters or enter other text directly from the notification.

Starting in Android 10 (API level 29), the platform can automatically generate action buttons with suggested intent-based deportment.

Adding action buttons is explained further in Create a Notification.

Require an unlocked device

Users might encounter notification actions on the device's lock screen. If a given notification activeness causes an app to launch an activeness or ship a direct answer, users must unlock the device earlier the app tin invoke that notification action.

On Android 12 (API level 31) and higher, you can configure a notification activeness such that the device must be unlocked in club for your app to invoke that action, no matter what workflow the action launches. This selection helps add an extra layer of security to notifications on locked devices.

To crave a device to be unlocked before your app invokes a given notification action, laissez passer truthful into setAuthenticationRequired() when creating your notification action, equally shown in the following code snippet:

Kotlin

val moreSecureNotification = Notification.Builder(         context, NotificationListenerVerifierActivity.TAG)     .addAction(...)              // This notification always requests authentication when invoked     // from a lock screen.     .setAuthenticationRequired(truthful)              .build()

Java

Notification moreSecureNotification = new Notification.Builder(         context, NotificationListenerVerifierActivity.TAG)     .addAction(...)              // This notification always requests authentication when invoked     // from a lock screen.     .setAuthenticationRequired(truthful)              .build();

Expandable notification

By default, the notification's text content is truncated to fit on one line. If you want your notification to be longer, you can enable a larger text area that's expandable by applying an additional template, as shown in figure 8.

Figure 8. An expandable notification for large text

You can also create an expandable notification with an image, in inbox style, a chat conversation, or media playback controls. For more than information, read Create an Expandable Notification.

Notification updates and groups

To avert bombarding your users with multiple or redundant notifications when you take additional updates, you should consider updating an existing notification rather than issuing a new one, or consider using the inbox-mode notification to show conversation updates.

However, if it'south necessary to deliver multiple notifications, you should consider grouping those separate notifications into a grouping (available on Android 7.0 and college). A notification group allows you to plummet multiple notifications into just one postal service in the notification drawer, with a summary. The user can then expand the notification to reveal the details for each individual notification.

The user can progressively expand the notification group and each notification within it for more than details.

Effigy ten. A collapsed and expanded notification group

To acquire how to add notifications to a group, see Create a Group of Notifications.

Notification channels

Starting in Android 8.0 (API level 26), all notifications must be assigned to a channel or it will not appear. Past categorizing notifications into channels, users can disable specific notification channels for your app (instead of disabling all your notifications), and users tin can control the visual and auditory options for each channel—all from the Android system settings (figure 11). Users can as well long-press a notification to change behaviors for the associated channel.

On devices running Android 7.1 (API level 25) and lower, users tin can manage notifications on a per-app basis merely (effectively each app only has one channel on Android 7.1 and lower).

Figure xi. Notification settings for Clock app and 1 of its channels

Ane app can have multiple notification channels—a divide channel for each type of notification the app issues. An app tin can also create notification channels in response to choices made by users of your app. For instance, you may set up separate notification channels for each chat grouping created past a user in a messaging app.

The channel is likewise where you lot specify the importance level for your notifications on Android 8.0 and higher. So all notifications posted to the same notification channel accept the aforementioned behavior.

For more than data, encounter Create and Manage Notification Channels.

Notification importance

Android uses the importance of a notification to determine how much the notification should interrupt the user (visually and audibly). The higher the importance of a notification, the more interruptive the notification will be.

On Android eight.0 (API level 26) and to a higher place, importance of a notification is determined past the importance of the channel the notification was posted to. Users can change the importance of a notification channel in the system settings (effigy 12). On Android seven.ane (API level 25) and beneath, importance of each notification is determined by the notification's priority.

Figure 12. Users can change the importance of each channel on Android viii.0 and higher

The possible importance levels are the following:

Urgent: Makes a sound and appears equally a heads-upwards notification.
Loftier: Makes a sound.
Medium: No sound.
Low: No sound and does non appear in the condition bar.

All notifications, regardless of importance, appear in not-interruptive system UI locations, such as in the notification drawer and as a badge on the launcher icon (though you can modify the appearance of the notification badge).

For more than information, see how to prepare the importance.

Do Not Disturb mode

Starting in Android v.0 (API level 21), users can enable Exercise Not Disturb way, which silences sounds and vibration for all notifications. Notifications still announced in the system UI as normal, unless the user specifies otherwise.

There are iii dissimilar levels available in Practise Not Disturb style:

Total silence: blocks all sounds and vibrations, including from alarms, music, videos, and games.
Alarms merely: blocks all sounds and vibrations, except from alarms.
Priority merely: users can configure which system-broad categories can interrupt them (such every bit just alarms, reminders, events, calls, or letters). For messages and calls, users can also cull to filter based on who the sender or caller is (figure 13).

Effigy 13. Users tin can allow notifications through based on system-wide categories (left) and based on who sent a bulletin or who is calling (right).

On Android 8.0 (API level 26) and above, users tin additionally allow notifications through for app-specific categories (as well known as channels) by overriding Practice Not Disturb on a channel-by-channel basis. For case, a payment app might have channels for notifications related to withdrawals and deposits. The user tin can then choose to permit either withdrawal notifications, deposit notifications, or both when in priority mode. On devices running Android 7.i (API level 25) and beneath, users can allow notifications through on an app past app footing, rather than on a aqueduct past aqueduct footing.

To properly configure your notifications for these user settings, y'all must ready a organization-wide category and channel.

Notifications for foreground services

A notification is required when your app is running a "foreground service"—a Service running in the background that's long living and noticeable to the user, such as a media thespian. This notification cannot be dismissed like other notifications. To remove the notification, the service must be either stopped or removed from the "foreground" country.

For more information read Running a service in the foreground. And if you are edifice a media role player, also read Using MediaStyle notifications with a foreground service.

Posting limits

Beginning with Android 8.1 (API level 27), apps cannot make a notification sound more than than once per 2nd. If your app posts multiple notifications in 1 2d, they all appear equally expected, but just the first notification per second makes a sound.

However, Android too applies a charge per unit limit when updating a notification. If you postal service updates to a single notification besides oftentimes (many in less than one second), the system might driblet some updates.

Notification compatibility

Since Android one.0, the notification system UI and the notification-related APIs accept continually evolved. To apply the latest notification API features while still supporting older devices, use the support library notification API: NotificationCompat and its subclasses, too as NotificationManagerCompat. This will let you to avoid writing conditional lawmaking to bank check API levels because these APIs handle that for yous.

NotificationCompat is updated as the platform evolves to include the latest methods. Information technology is important to note that the availability of a method in NotificationCompat does not guarantee that the respective feature will be provided on older devices. In some cases calling a newly-introduced API results in a no-op on older devices. For example, NotificationCompat.addAction() displays the action button on a device running Android 4.1 (API level 16) and college only.

The post-obit is a summary of the nearly notable behavior changes for Android notifications.

Android 4.1, API level 16

Introduced expandable notification templates (called notification styles), assuasive for larger notification content area to display data. Users can use a one finger swipe upwards/down gesture to expand a notification.
Also introduced the ability to add together additional actions, in the course of buttons, to a notification.
Added ability for users to turn notifications off on a per-app ground in settings.

Android iv.4, API level 19 and xx

Notification listener services were added to the API.
Android Wear (now chosen Wear OS) support was added in API level twenty.

Android 5.0, API level 21

Introduced lock screen and heads-up notifications.
The user can now put the phone into Do Not Disturb mode and configure which notifications are allowed to interrupt them when the device is in priority only manner.
Methods added to API set whether or not a notification is displayed on the lock screen (setVisibility()) and for specifying "public" version of the notification text.
setPriority() method added which tells the system how "interruptive" this notification should exist (eastward.g. setting information technology to loftier makes the notification announced as a heads-up notification).
Notification stacks support added to Android Wear (now chosen Wearable OS) devices. Put notifications into a stack using setGroup(). Annotation that notification stacks were non supported on tablets nor phones withal. Notification stacks would later become known as a group or packet.

Android seven.0, API level 24

Notification templates were restyled to put accent on the hero image and avatar.
Three notification templates were added: one for messaging apps and the other 2 for decorating custom content views with the expandable affordance and other system decorations.
Support added to handheld devices (phones and tablets) for notification groups. Uses the same API as Android Wear (now called Article of clothing Bone) notification stacks introduced in Android 5.0 (API level 21).
Users tin can answer directly inside of a notification (they tin enter text which will and so be routed to the notification's parent app) using inline reply.

Android 8.0, API level 26

Individual notifications must at present be put in a specific channel.
Users can now turn off notifications per aqueduct, instead of turning off all notifications from an app.
Apps with active notifications brandish a notification "bluecoat" on top of their app icon on the home/launcher screen.
Users tin can now snooze a notification from the drawer. You can gear up an automatic timeout for a notification.
Y'all can also set the notification'due south background colour.
Some APIs regarding notification behaviors were moved from Notification to NotificationChannel. For instance, use NotificationChannel.setImportance() instead of NotificationCompat.Builder.setPriority() for Android 8.0 and higher.

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Source: https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/notifiers/notifications