Gadgetory

one of my favorite things about Android is how it handles notifications but recently things have been getting a little out of hand I'm Taylor Martin this is PocketNow and this is why my Android notification shade is a mess few will argue the notification shade on Android is a problem in fact it's one of the better parts of the platform Windows Phone for example doesn't even have a centralized place to check your notifications you instead have to skim through dozens of tiles on your home screen for scattered sparse information Notification Center on iOS was a flattering copy of Android Shade without the helpful information in the status bar to tell you about pending notifications it was loosely linked to the badge notifications found in the upper right corner of app icons except they were never really in sync with one another the new Notification Center looks better and it displays some useful information but the actual notification aspect of it is no more practical or helpful than before on Android I've been trained to peek at the notification shade when I want to know what's happening on my phone anyone who has used Android for any amount of time knows this and for all intents and purposes it works exceptionally well drag downward over collapsed notifications to expand them or expand notifications one by one for the two fingers swipe down expanded notifications often have additional information at a glance and actions built directly into them for instance I can reply to or retweet mentions on Twitter through plume directly from the notification shade dismiss with a quick and easy swipe left or right and a short list of status icons shortcuts and toggles can be accessed by tapping the button in the upper right corner from within the shade or a two finger swipe down from the top of the display from virtually anywhere in the operating system on tablets the notification and quick setting shades are separated notifications to the upper left corner quick settings in the upper right until recently I've had literally no complaints with the way Android handles notifications in fact I still don't but I do have a problem with how the notification shade has become the catch-all for anything and everything ongoing the notification shade has always been and should have remained a place where I look for one thing notifications except through an ongoing status and certain priority settings chosen by the developer it's likely your note vacation shade is littered with a handful of nonstop notifications which are always present take my motox for example there are currently 13 notifications in my shade the only actual notifications are multiple emails from three different accounts one Twitter notification from flume and Instagram notification a Facebook notification and a hangouts message the remaining spots are filled with the semi-permanent trusted devices notification fixed to the top position the Nerdist podcast and pocket casts a Wi-Fi notification pebble notification the one swipe notification from Action launcher and clipper with the exception of the playing podcast the rest are virtually always there telling me nothing new and taking up a considerable amount of space more importantly they're making my notification shade a whole heck of a lot more cluttered and as such more difficult to read and sip through quickly the easy answer is to uninstall and not use applications which use persistent notifications or disable the notifications altogether but I rely on most of these apps and services and without them persistently present in the notification shade the system will likely kill the app and any related connections or functionality for instance pebble it requires a notification to ensure the pebble application is kept up and running not closed you can disable this notification but the connection to your actual pebble can get a little wonky and it's the same for action launcher one swipe beta if you kill the notification either through the system or application settings but one swipe feature the unique ability to access widgets in your application quick drawer from within any application may be lost trusted devices is present any time you connect your Moto X to a trusted device this persistent notification is there one to remind you that your phone will not lock itself while connected and to so you can quickly lock the phone without disconnecting your Bluetooth device these ongoing notifications serve a purpose and while some developers needlessly require a notification to be persistently present in the notification shade many of them actually need to be there to make some truly awesome functionality possible it's not just the Moto X either it's any Android device I use the Nexus 5 the Nexus 7 etc and it's only getting worse over time I can't blame the developers for doing what google has told them to do but I can insist Google update the appearance of ongoing notifications to make them less obtrusive and annoying there is a simple solution move all the minimum priority ongoing Status Messages such as the ones from pebble one swipe pocket casts or other media playback clipper trusted devices and the like to be in the quick settings page below all the toggles it would be just as simple to access a view without making the notification shade a stress-inducing mixture of important information and virtual placeholders leave a comment below and tell us how you think Google should differentiate and separate actual notifications from an ongoing status that never changes that's going to wrap up this video if you enjoyed it be sure to click the thumbs up button below and subscribe to the channel to see more videos like this one in the future leave a comment if you have any questions or suggestions and follow us in all the usual places twitter facebook and google+ at pocket now i'm taylor martin you can find me on twitter it has protected and i will see you next time