Android 11 DP2 finally gives us a notification history panel

We’ve known for a while now that Google has been working on a way to easily show users all the notifications they’ve recently received. Now, finally, in the second developer preview of Android 11, we get to see what Google has in mind.

In Android 11 DP2, when you swipe down the notification drawer, there’s a link at the bottom that says History or Manage (it spontaneously changed for us). Tapping History takes you to a new section of Android that lists out literally every notification that’s come through your phone recently — even ones you normally wouldn’t see.

Check out the screenshots below to get an idea of what it looks like:

The organization of the previous notifications in Android 11 is pretty straightforward. At the top are notifications you recently dismissed, which is perfect for when you accidentally swipe something away and want to find out what it was. Underneath that section is a running list of all the notifications you either saw or didn’t see that day.

Some of the notifications that appear in the Today section are things you don’t actually see, such as apps communicating with the Android system or silent updates. This is an interesting new tool that could help you find resource-heavy apps or rogue apps that you don’t know about.

Related: Google releases Android 11 Developer Preview 2: Here are all the details

You’ll also notice above that you can turn off the Android 11 notification history. This is a great tool, so we’re not sure why you would want it turned off, but you have that option as of now. For what it’s worth, the option was off by default when we booted up.

As usual, this is just a developer preview of Android 11, so this feature could look very different — or get removed entirely — by the time the stable version of the operating system launches.