In Android 8.0 Oreo, the number of ways in which you can view and deal with notifications has expanded yet again. Now, you can preview app notifications and decide whether to act on them before opening the app.

In the previous Android version, Google added a feature called app shortcuts that works a bit like right-click on the PC: When you press and hold on an app icon, you will see a pop-up menu of options that are contextually related to that app. For example, when I press and hold on the Google Maps icon, I see Work and Home items so I can select one to navigate to that location, or drag it to the Home screen for frequent use. That app shortcuts menu also include an App info button, for accessing that app’s App info screen in Settings. And, when available, a Widgets button so you can add a widget for that app to your home screen.

In Android 8.0 Oreo, Google has expanded the app shortcuts menu to include notification previews. This new feature is feature is tied to notification dots, the first Android 8.0 Oreo feature on which I focused. That is, you’ll only see notification previews on app icons for which a notification dot is visible.

(As you may recall, notification dots appear as colored overlays or badges over an app icon when that app has a pending notification.)

As I write this, I have a notification from the Project Fi app. This notification is available via the Notification shade at the top of the screen. And I can see from the Project Fi icon’s notification dot that I have a notification as well.

To preview this notification, I just press and hold on the Project Fi icon. The preview appears alongside the app shortcuts menu.

Thanks to this additional functionality, there is now yet another way to mark a notification as done, too. I can swipe off the notification preview to remove it. Or I can select it to open the app and view the item that triggered the notification. Each of these actions will remove the notification from the Notification shade as well.

If there are multiple notifications on an app, you will see a count and smaller icons for accessing the other items that triggered the other, non-previewed notifications.

Also, clearing the app’s notifications from the Notification shade, or manually opening the app, will likewise clear the notification dot from the app’s icon as well as those notification previews.

Tagged with Android O