Notification channels or categories are one of the important additions to notification organization and customization introduced with Android 8 Oreo. App developers should assign notifications that their apps send to channels. For example, a social network app might create channels for comments, messages, ads and recommendations, etc.
The user can control which channels are allowed and which are not with the ability to customize aspects of the notifications like if they should be silent, the sound used for each channel, and the use of vibration.
Although some apps still abuse the notification channels or categories by adding all of the notifications in one category, many apps have integrated the use of channels effectively, including mainstream apps like Facebook, Telegram, WhatsApp, among others.
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Samsung One UI 6.1 and notification categories:
Despite the importance of the notification channels that are called on Samsung devices notification categories, Samsung made an unjustified move with One UI 6.1 by disabling the use of the feature by default. The change didn’t only impact devices coming with One UI 6.1 out of the box; it also affected devices that were updated to One UI 6.1. After the update, the notification categories feature was disabled, even if users had customized categories before the update.
How to Enable Notification Categories on One UI 6.1:
Whether your device runs on One UI 6.1 out of the box or you have updated from an older version, the method to enable notification categories is easy. Here are the necessary steps:
- Open settings on your device. Settings can be found among apps in the apps list, can be reached from the notification shade, or by using a voice assistant.
- Navigate to “Notifications” and activate it.
- Activate “Advanced settings”.
- Now just toggle the “Manage notification categories for each app” option to on. Note that if you are re-enabling the feature after the 6.1 update, all of your previous changes will return without the need to redo them.
How to Customize App Notification Categories:
You can find app related notification categories settings after opening the app info and then selecting “Notifications”, and then “Notification categories”. To open app info, you can long-press the app name on your home screen or in the apps list, or you can go to the apps section of the settings and select the app from there. Additionally, you can open app info if the app is in the recents list by selecting app info from advanced options.
Moreover, notification categories can be found by long-pressing notifications received from apps and then tapping settings.
In the notification categories, you will find all channels created by the app, and you can turn off any of them or select it to customize its aspects to your liking. Note that the previously provided info is based on the Samsung One UI and that settings placements or option names may vary across brands and Android versions.
In UI 6.1 Samsung continues to block the ability to disable some notifications for some system applications such as all ‘Accessibility Usage’ notifications for Android System.