Wow! A lot of people still don’t know about this seven year old Android feature. –

My colleague Calvin Wankhede recently wrote an opinion piece explaining why he’ll stick to Android forever unless iOS gets notification channels. In it, he talks about his experience using the iPhone 15 after years on the other side of the fence and using Android. Its change was particularly painful due to the lack of notification channels on iOS, a feature present on Android since Android 8.0. If you’re still wondering what exactly notification channels are for, you’re not alone.

It turns out that more than half of our readers didn’t know about notification channels on Android. A notification channel survey on our website received over 5,300 votes. Surprisingly, 43.6% of respondents did not know what notification channels/categories are on their Android devices. Fortunately, the camps were almost evenly distributed. 40.2% of voters said they use notification channels and agreed that iOS could benefit from a similar system.

“Notification channels are good and should definitely be copied by Apple (and I miss notification history and to a lesser extent repeating notifications on iOS),” said one voter.

However, some voters felt that iOS has a superior notification system than Android. One even pointed out that Android’s notification system was much better before than it is now.

“If you compare with the most recent versions of Android, then yes, the gap is smaller simply because Google made notifications much worse. With Android 11 and earlier, it’s not even funny how much better the notifications are than modern Android and iOS. This is why I’m so tired of Android these days: I can get a much superior notification experience using a 6-10 year old phone. There is something wrong there.

For those of you who still don’t know what notification channels are on Android, maybe it’s time to try them. Notification channels allow you to decide which app notifications can be intrusive or visible. They give you more granular control, so you don’t end up with a long list of unnecessary alerts. Simply go to an app’s notification settings and select the channels you want to turn off or on.