Google has released the first Developer Preview of Android 15, the next version of its mobile operating system, which includes a new feature called “notification cooldown” that aims to reduce the annoyance of receiving too many notifications from the same app or conversation.
According to Android expert Mishaal Rahman, who shared the feature in a tweet, notification cooldown will “gradually lower the notification volume when you get many successive notifications from the same app” or conversation. This feature will be enabled by default in Android 15, unless Google decides to change it before the final release.
Users will have the option to apply notification cooldown to all notifications or only to conversations. For example, if a user is part of a group chat that sends a lot of messages, a notification cooldown will make the sound less intrusive. Similarly, if an app sends frequent notifications, the notification cooldown will lower the volume for each subsequent notification.
Android 15 DP1 has a new “keyboard vibration” toggle under Settings → Sound & vibration → Vibration & haptics that disables haptics in your keyboard app. I first revealed this in the Android 14 QPR2 Beta 2 release, but it’s now enabled by default. pic.twitter.com/vFhsUxCh6N
— Mishaal Rahman (@MishaalRahman) February 16, 2024
The feature will not mute the notifications completely but rather adjust the volume based on the frequency and source of the notifications. The idea is that the user will notice the decreasing volume and realize that the notification is from an app or a conversation that has already sent notifications. This way, the user can decide whether to ignore a low-volume notification, open it later, or check a regular-volume notification that indicates a new sender.
Notification cooldown will reset after a certain period of time, which is not specified yet, and restore the normal volume for all notifications, regardless of how many times they have been repeated.
Notification cooldown is one of the many features that Google is testing in the first Developer Preview of Android 15, which is intended for developers only, to help them with early development, testing, and feedback. Android 15 also brings improvements to Privacy Sandbox, Health Connect, File Integrity, and Partial Screen Sharing, among others.
Google plans to release another Developer Preview next month, followed by four beta releases from April to July, with the beta reaching platform stability in June. The final release of Android 15 is expected to happen in September or October. Last year, Android 14 was launched by Google on October 4th.