With DP1, we now have the ability to ignore notifications for a certain amount of time with the Snooze Notifications feature that is baked into Android O.
When Google released the first developer preview of Android O, we learned that they were doing some more work with the notification system. Google has made changes to notifications with each major update to Android over the last few years. So many were wondering exactly what Google meant by more changes were being made.
We could see additional changes to in future developer preview updates, but for now the biggest change is the ability to snooze Android O notifications.
Now, we’ve had the ability to manually disable notifications for an application or a game in the past. This was great for when we never wanted to see a notification again (I use this a lot for mobile games), but this wasn’t ever the best solution for those times when we only wanted them turned off for a short period of time. Manually disabling notifications for an app or game meant that we had to remember to go back into the system and manually enable them again.
This is no longer needed in Android O, so let me show you how to snooze notifications in the first developer preview.
Android O Snooze Notifications
- Wait until you received a notification from an application you want to snooze
- Slowly swipe the notification card to the right until you see the Clock icon appear
- Tap on the Clock icon to snooze a notification for 15 minutes
- Or you can tap the 15 minute timer and select a longer snooze period (optional)
Explanation
If you have ever manually disabled notifications for an application or game by sliding the notification to reveal the Gear icon, then this will be familiar to you. The Gear icon is still there, and you’ll see it when you let go of the notification after slowly sliding it to the right. But now we have a new icon of a Clock here and this is the button we tap in order to snooze an Android O notification. I’ve been unable to find a way to snooze a notification without receiving a notification first.
If you’re aware of how to do this (since I could just be missing out it’s done), please let me know in the comments section below. Google may even add in this feature in a future update to the developer preview of Android O. As of right now though, it requires you to have an active notification sitting in your Notification Shade. You’ll also want to be careful when you’re swiping the notification to the right. Use too much force and you’ll swipe it away entirely.
You’ll see an arrow icon to the right of the time in which the Android O notification has been snoozed for. By default, this is set to 15 minutes but if you tap that down arrow then you’ll be given the option to extend the time in which these notifications are snoozed. So instead of snoozing an Android O notification for 15 minutes, you can also choose to snooze them for 30 minutes, or 60 minutes. These are the only three options we get here, other than undoing the snooze that we just setup.
These numbers could also change in future updates to the Android O developer preview builds, but as of right now we have these three options. Maybe in the future Google will remove that Don’t Snooze option and change it to something like Custom. This way we can simply tap on the Custom option and manually choose how long we want to ignore notifications from an application or a game. This is unlikely to happen, but it is something that I would like to see.
