Android 16 could bring order to your chaotic notification panel

Android’s notification panel is one of its biggest strengths. It allows you to reply to incoming messages quickly, check the contents of new emails arriving in your inbox, glance at your food delivery status, and more — all without opening any app. To tame all incoming notifications and save you from the frustration caused by repeated notifications, Google is developing a Notification Cooldown feature for Android 16. But that’s not it, as the company is reportedly also working on bringing Gmail-like categories for smarter and more organized notification management in the next Android release.

Gmail can organize your inbox into Primary, Promotions, Social, Updates, and Forums categories. As the name indicates, the emails are classified depending on the content and sender, so you can go through important emails quickly and catch up on all your newsletters and other subscription emails later in the day.

In a report for Android Authority, Android expert Mishaal Rahman details finding a hidden Bundled notifications settings page under Settings > Notifications in the latest Android 15 QPR2 beta release. The feature will seemingly silence and group similar notifications, ensuring you don’t keep getting distracted by Amazon’s package delivery emails.

Similar notifications will be grouped together, with Promotions, News, Social, and Recommendations being the few categories.

Notification bundling is disabled by default, and if enabled, it will take precedence over an app’s notification settings. Mishaal could not get Bundled notifications to work in Android 15 QPR2 Beta 2, signaling it is still under development.

If you receive hundreds of unwanted notifications throughout the day, Notification bundling could make your life easier. The OS will automatically bundle all promotional and social notifications into relevant categories, which you can check after office hours or when free.

Android’s notification management is only going to get better

Source: Pexels / Android Police

Android’s notification panel has always stood out for its functionality, and Google keeps improving the experience with every release. With Android 16, it appears the company aims to tackle the problem of repeated and unwanted notifications through Notification cooldown and Notification bundling.

But these two are not the only notification-related changes you could see in the next big Android release. Google is reportedly also working on a new chip notification that will enable notifications to appear in the status bar directly.