As far as notifications go, Android does many things right, such as combining them, showing smart replies, letting you reply in-line, and more. There are still some things about Android notifications that people find annoying, however. Old notifications are one example of how the OS handles, or rather doesn’t handle, them. There is finally a fix for old notification spam in the latest beta of Android 15.
Have you ever turned on an Android tablet you haven’t used in a long time? Before the Android 15 update, it would make a lot of noise playing all the notification sounds you missed. Even if your tablet was on silent, it might vibrate a lot if you had a bunch of notifications. This could be really annoying!
Engineers at Google were probably tired of this happening to them too. In the latest Android 15 beta, they added a new rule – notifications older than two weeks will not make noise or vibrate your device. It will also not show you the full details of really old notifications. You’ll still see how long ago they happened so you know what apps or people to check in with.
How can a notification be old if you’re just seeing it now? It’s because Android looks at the time the notification was originally sent, not when it shows up on your device. So all those missed notifications get sent to your tablet at once, but now Android 15 will ignore any from more than two weeks ago. This should stop all that unexpected noise when you turn on a device you haven’t used in a while.
Google is also working on other ways to make notifications less bothersome, like syncing when you dismiss them between devices. And a “cooldown” period to stop back-to-back notifications from making noise. Overall it seems like they really want to cut down on annoying notification behaviors. If you have a device on the latest Android 15 beta, you won’t have to worry about piles of old notifications startling you anymore!
