Some of the best advancements made with Android lately have been the way we interact with and view notifications. Immersive mode in Android kit kat has certainly been one of the better features to come to the OS, but if you’re using a custom ROM on your device then there are arguably some really great things that you may have noticed aren’t part of your standard android builds. Paranoid Android as always has some interesting, and cool things to offer up to the community of users who take part in their ROM, one of the more recent features being “Peek”, that lets you see your notifications at a glance, essentially taking a peek at the notification while your devices display is asleep. One of the most popular features that put Paranoid Android on the map for many was HALO, the notifications feature from the last ROM build that was based off of Android Jelly Bean, but with the changes in design guidelines and the overall look and feel of Android Kit Kat the PA team just felt that HALO wouldn’t translate nicely to the new ROM that’s based of Android 4.4.
This is where the new “Hover” feature comes in, and serves as the replacement or rather the evolution of HALO within the Paranoid Android ROM. Hover just like the name suggests allows you to have your notification hover over just about anything you’re doing on screen with a floating panel when the notification is touched. When Hover is activated the notifications via Hover replace the status bar in a way and show up as they come in, so no matter what you’re doing on your device the Hover notification will drop down as a transparent bar where the status bar usually sits. It stays there for a few seconds giving you a quick glance at whatever the incoming notification is, allowing you to read it or just let it disappear. As stated in the video below if the Hover notification appears and you promptly touch anywhere else on the display, the notification disappears quicker than normal.
If the notification is more than a quick message with more context, you can expand the notification to read it which restarts the initial three second timer before its disappearance. While this is still an early beta build it’ll likely have some pretty innovative features once it’s ready for prime time and out of beta. It’s already available for download via the latest build of the ROM itself, so if you have have a device that PA supports than you can head over to the PA website and get the necessary files to get started.