Android 12 is officially here albeit in a developer preview capacity, and the latest version of software is bringing some significant changes to the notifications system.
Notifications in Android have gone through many iterations over the years, and with Android 12 Google is looking to speed things up. A big focus with notifications in this latest release is speed. In particular, making notifications faster and more responsive.
This should cut down the time it takes for users to get notifications for apps that they have them enabled for. While also pumping them up with some robust improvements that make them more enjoyable to interact with.
Notifications in Android 12 are getting “modern design” refresh
Google is focusing on making notifications faster with the upcoming version of Android, but it’s not just about speed. It’s about streamlining the system as a whole and sprucing things up a bit.
To that end Google is giving the notifications system a “modern design” refresh. So things will start to look a little bit different going forward. What does that entail? Well, a few things. For starters, Google is adding decorations to notifications that have custom content.
This will include icon and expand affordances that match all other notifications. Google hasn’t exactly elaborated on this yet in terms of what this actually looks like visually. But more detail on what that will start to surface as users get the developer preview installed and are able to check things out.
A more modern design with increased functionality that’s easier to use
In addition to design changes that Google feels are more modern, notifications are also going to have more functionality and be easier to use.
Though keeping this in mind, this is Google’s interpretation. And some users may not find things easier to use at all. That is the intention of these changes though. So for the most part users should have less of a hassle interacting with notifications as they come in on their device.
Google will also be optimizing the transition of animations to give things a smoother look.
Getting rid of notification trampolines
This is one part of how Google is going to make notifications faster and more responsive. As Google notes, “notification trampolines (an intermediary broadcast receiver or service) can cause significant delays that affect the user experience.”
Google wants developers to move away from that. Going forward, the new process for handling notifications when a user taps on one should be to trigger the activity start directly. This way, Google says, notifications will be closer to opening the corresponding app more immediately.
Android 12 is accomplishing this desired change by blocking notifications trampolines. In practice by making it impossible for them to launch their target activities. For now, Google says this will only impact apps which are targeting the new platform.