Earlier this week, Google seemed to have jumped the gun a little and released Android N in its first Developer Preview. While the release date is pegged for the Summer, it’s more than likely that Google is looking for a longer gestation period before they roll out Android N to users and more importantly OEMs like Samsung and co. For the most part, N appears to be much like Marshmallow was, an update packed full of small tweaks and changes here and there, but there’s a lot more going on under-the-hood this time around. Like the move to Java 8 and a faster ART runtime. For users however, there are a number of changes to useability and one of those is how Do Not Disturb can be configured in Android N.
Do Not Disturb was introduced with Android Lollipop, and it’s basically a way of blocking any notifications from making a noise or vibrating, and since then users have been able to configure it to automatically turn on at a certain time, but now Google has made some changes to this as well. These changes are hidden within the System UI Tuner, and it allows users to either show the Do Not Disturb toggle with the volume buttons or allow to be triggered by the hardware buttons themselves. The first of these makes it simple to manually put your phone into Do Not Disturb any time you make any change to the volume level of your device, this does also introduce a little extra space taken up by the pop-over, though. The second choice brings back the long-gone option to put your phone into silent by using the hardware volume down button on your device. With this enabled, users can hold down the volume button to get to zero, and then tap it once more to enter Do Not Disturb mode.
These new tweaks will no doubt be welcomed by a lot of users that have found it difficult to get used to the new modes that Google introduced with Android Lollipop, but as this is a Preview of Android N, this might not end up as final features. Those running the preview and enjoying these new features, should definitely let Google know if you feel these are an improvement or not.
