Android 15 could make notification management even better

Summary

• Android users can easily manage unwanted notifications with notification channels for more control over app alerts.
• A hidden flag in Android 15 beta 1 hides unnecessary notification channels from apps, simplifying the process.
• By eliminating unused notification categories, Google could further improve the notification system for Android users.

Android’s excellent notification system makes it easy to curb promotional and spammy app notifications. With notification channels, you can enjoy granular control over an app’s notifications and block unwanted notifications from specific categories. This way, you can continue to receive important notifications while blocking all the unimportant ones. Notification categories are a great idea, but many apps flood them with unnecessary channels, making it hard to figure out which ones to disable to silence spam and promotional messages. Google could finally solve this issue with Android 15 later this year.

Android expert Mishaal Rahmaan enabled some hidden flags in Android 15 beta 1 that hide unused notification channels from apps by default. To reveal the full list, you must tap the three-dot menu button in the top-right corner and tap on Show unused channels. The smaller list will only show channels an app has used to send notifications, so you can quickly figure out which ones you want to turn off.

Left: Notification channels used by the Instagram app; Right: The app creates 25 channels, though

As an example, Rahman explains in his article for Android Authority how Instagram creates 25 notification channels, even though it never uses most of them. This makes it difficult to identify which channels you should disable. After enabling the hidden flag in Android 15 Beta 1, the OS automatically hid 22 unused notification categories created by the app.

This improvement will make notification channels even better

Since the first Android 15 beta hides the ability to hide unwanted notification channels, there’s a possibility Google might not include this feature in the public release of the OS. However, Rahmaan believes the company has little reason to do so, especially since the feature already works. Google might officially announce this notification channel improvement during its keynote at Google I/O next month.

Android’s notification handling is leaps and bounds better than that of iPhones, and notification channels are a key reason behind this. If Google goes ahead with this improvement for notification channels, it will only extend its lead over iOS in this area.