Google ought to make Android notifications higher by taking inspiration from this unlikely app

Whether or not or not you prefer it, Slack is virtually the spine of contemporary firms. It is changed e-mail for the overwhelming majority of interoffice communication at locations of all dimension and scope, together with proper right here at Android Police. Corporations like Microsoft have spent billions of {dollars} constructing another into its suite of Workplace 365 merchandise. I personally cannot think about doing my job with out Slack, and but, tens of millions of its customers most likely despise its very existence.

I am not right here to litigate whether or not Slack is sweet for the office — although let’s be trustworthy, it is a web impartial at worst. As a substitute, I need to draw some consideration to a characteristic the corporate launched over a 12 months in the past. It is an strategy to notification administration that I feel is totally good, and one thing that, with sufficient work, may evolve into the way forward for cellular notifications on Android and past.

Notifications want a makeover in our fashionable age

However I am undecided AI is the answer

It appears apparent that persistent notifications are a kind of issues destined to face a reckoning within the coming years. We have already seen loads of devices and apps designed that can assist you disconnect, largely to keep away from getting pestered by work emails on a weekend or “deal” alerts from Amazon at any time when the app feels prefer it. Digital detoxing is not as onerous as some make it out to be — I’ve successfully accomplished one thing related with each Android telephones and Android tablets — however the urge for food for higher administration instruments is concurrently very obvious and really actual.

Sadly, it appears as if the real-world want for higher notifications has clashed headfirst with the tech world’s have to AI-ify each facet of your digital life. The ensuing mess we’re left with are notification summaries, presently reside on Apple Intelligence-supported smartphones and seemingly within the works for a future Android model. Notification summaries promise to condense the knowledge you want right into a single sentence or two, saving you time and complications alongside the way in which. With two supported iPhone evaluations below my belt, although, I can inform you they do something however.

Clearly, I can solely converse to Apple’s implementation of this idea; Google’s will presumably arrive with Android 16 in June or with the deliberate second replace set for later this 12 months. Nonetheless, my time with notification summaries on the iPhone has been nothing however unhealthy. This is what I mentioned on this characteristic final fall when reviewing the iPhone 16 Professional Max:

For each good abstract (equivalent to an ideal two-line notification detailing a dialog in regards to the lack of small Android pill choices), there are 5 unhealthy ones. The impact is not saving you time; it is forcing you to double-check each notification to make sure you see the right particulars. The one spot the place these summaries are reliably correct is duplicate notifications the place you need not see each incoming ping, like Ring’s movement alerts or Twitch streamers going reside.

And here is me once more, reviewing the iPhone 16e earlier this month:

Notification summaries stay as ineffective as ever; they’ve discovered to construct foolish group chat names into their context, which by some means makes them even worse than earlier than.

It is value noting that the one change Apple made within the 4 months between these respective evaluations was to disable notifications abstract help with information apps, as a result of it was significantly unhealthy at making up false headlines.

An early take a look at Android’s potential notification abstract settings.

Let me be blunt: I feel AI-powered summaries for notifications are merely the flawed option to go about this. Notifications on the whole — even on platforms with “good” ones like Android — are in determined want for a full makeover, and I do not assume asking any AI platform that suffers from hallucinations (so, all of them) to generate correct alerts is the way in which to go. As a substitute, I would prefer to see Google and every other OS developer take some inspiration from a shock participant. And that brings us again to Slack.

I feel playing cards could possibly be the way forward for cellular notifications

And Slack’s been proving me proper

Final January, Slack launched “Catch Up” on its assortment of cellular apps. On the time, it was fairly roundly mocked for bringing Tinder-esque playing cards into enterprise software program. It is onerous accountable anybody for attempting to dunk on Slack — it is fairly inherently foolish to be launched to swiping proper and left within the context of a digital office when that language is so intrinsically linked to the trendy relationship scene. And but, after a 12 months of counting on Catch Up almost each day, I do not know what I would do with out it.

Catch Up is a straightforward sufficient characteristic. On any smartphone or pill, unread messages, channels, and threads may be collected and seen by tapping on “Catch up” on the prime of the display screen. Catch Up appears, at the least indirectly, to be filtered based mostly on what Slack thinks represents a precedence notification, and most of the time, my most unread messages are on the prime of this stack. As soon as this characteristic is lively, you will see each new alert in your feed — and that is the place Catch Up will get attention-grabbing.

Reasonably than reacting to each particular person message with a response or response, you possibly can select to swipe proper or left to mark learn or depart unread, respectively. You’ll be able to leap in at any time to ship a reply, but when the overwhelming majority of your channels merely want your eyes and never a direct response, shortly marking channels learn is a lifesaver. The primary few occasions you utilize this characteristic, it feels fairly foolish. However over the previous 12 months, I’ve discovered it to be indispensable, the proper center floor between marking each DM learn sight unseen and manually managing your Slack account.

In actual fact, I prefer it a lot that I typically discover myself pulling my cellphone out to tear by means of unread alerts through the afternoon, fairly than having to examine the whole lot manually on desktop. I don’t know why Slack hasn’t introduced this device to extra units — most likely the identical AI obsession that has the remainder of the tech business in its grasp — however this precise workflow is what impressed me to pitch this as a possible notification overhaul for Android.

Think about a world the place you possibly can shortly view a digest of your unread alerts, sorting by precedence, proper out of your lock display screen. All of the sudden, tearing by means of these annoying push notifications that you do not even bear in mind enabling turns into one thing rather more manageable. It is simple to assume up some Android-centric additions to this device as properly, like fast hyperlinks for adjusting when and the way typically an app can notify you. Mainly, make notifications really feel like a core a part of Android, not one thing that lives in your lock display screen and in any other case stays out of sight.

In its finest state — the one I envisioned after I began eager about this strategy — I may see a Catch Up-esque UI fulfilling the promise Samsung tried with Now Transient on the Galaxy S25. Once more, it is one other case the place a tech firm turned to AI to aim to ship helpful info, whereas the entire alerts, messages, and extra you want to know already reside in your smartphone. They simply want a greater, revamped format for simpler administration.

It would be an enormous change, however I would like to see some notification overhauls sooner or later

Extra contemporary concepts, much less stale “AI” discuss

I am certain loads of you’re skeptical that the reply to notification overload is to easily masks your incoming alerts in a unique UI. However Slack’s Catch Up characteristic, in my eyes, proved that notification administration has loads of area to develop, change, and adapt. We have all watched as the whole lot from “digital wellbeing” instruments to expansive do-not-disturb modes tried — and, largely, failed — to tamper down the noise emanating out of your pocket, and admittedly, AI-powered summaries really feel like they’re on the identical observe.

Whereas I doubt Catch Up’s card-based UI will attraction to everybody, I feel it is properly value giving the identical shot that tech firms are giving to AI-based occasion methods. It is potential the way forward for cellular notifications already exists, buried in an enterprise app that almost all of its customers set up for his or her job and little else. We simply want an organization like Google courageous sufficient to adapt the thought.