Android Q's 'Notification Bell' helps you find what's new in your sea of notifs

I’m really, really bad at notification management. Most of the time, I leave my notifications sitting in my tray for hours, days, even months on end, because I truely believe in my heart of hearts that I’ll get back to them at some point.

Fortunately for me, Android is smart, and manages to keep notifications it deems important bubbled up to the top of my list. While this is important for my daily productivity output, it does make it so newer notifications of lower ‘priority’ are sometimes lost somewhere in my tray. I don’t always agree with the way Google manages priority, and every so often I’d prefer to watch that new YouTube video instead of responding to an email.

Now, with Android Q, Google has added a simple solution to this problem. When you get a notificaion, Android will display a little ‘Notification Bell’ icon next to the message, alerting you that it’s a brand new notification. This should help you find the new stuff in your sea of notifications, and can be pretty useful if you just want to know what’s new in your online life.

The icon should last little more than 30 seconds, but if you just need to quickly glance at what’s new instead of searching endlessly only to realize it’s a useless push notification, this change should be a welcome one.

What’s your favorite change so far in Android Q? We’re still digging through the developer preview to find out what’s new, so be sure to stay tuned for everything Q!