When you get a notification on Android you can swipe it away or half-swipe it to reveal a settings button, yet Android 12 may be altering things here a bit.
Google experiments with features all the time and sometimes those experiments stick around for a while. And it looks like Android 12 may be scrapping a little-known feature that wasn’t getting much action from the majority of the user base.
In particular it seems that Google is considering getting rid of the notification half-swipe option in Android 12. This is still the first developer preview of the latest version of Android. So Google could always revert things.
Android 12 developer preview 1 removes the notification half-swipe
Android is full of gestures these days. One of those gestures is the ability to perform a half-swipe on notifications. Which as noted above reveals a small cog button that opens up settings for that notification.
Initially after tapping that cog button, you get the option to toggle silent notifications for that app. With the “default” option being visible and active as well. There is also a button to turn notifications off, and you can even tap the cog button again to go to the full notification settings page for the app. Located in system settings.
In Android 12 with the first developer preview, this option is gone completely. Half swiping on notifications does nothing and the notification simply snaps back into place.
Snoozing is disabled by default
According to XDA’s Mishaal Rahman, who spotted this change, it doesn’t look snoozing is enabled by default. This is what suggests that Google could get rid of this feature but could also keep it around.
It seems entirely possible that since it’s not enabled by default, Google may just be testing the option for users to turn off snoozing notifications from the panel.
In Android 12 developer preview 1, you can enable snoozing notifications. And after doing so there will now be a small clock button with a “z” in the middle of it sitting in the bottom right corner of individual notification panels. This will make snoozing notifications much simpler. And since the snooze actions is a majority reason for having the half-swipe, it makes sense if Google is considering getting rid of it.
Google is experimenting with getting rid of the half-swipe notification panel, which was often underutilized by users who didn’t know the gesture existed. pic.twitter.com/A8JIH4sy1H
— Mishaal Rahman (@MishaalRahman) February 18, 2021