Back-to-back notifications drive you crazy, but you don’t want to turn off notifications or disable vibrations on your phone. Android 15 will try to address this problem with “notification cooldown,” a stand-out feature that makes notifications less annoying without completely nuking them.
We first learned of the new notification cooldown feature when testing the Android 15 Developer Preview. This feature, which is disabled by default in Android 15 Dev/Beta releases, detects when an app is sending too many notifications and gradually lowers each notification’s volume. Unfortunately, the Android 15 Developer Preview didn’t provide any cooldown settings for vibrations. If you’re anything like me, you’ve disabled audio notifications on your phone, so the lack of a vibration cooldown was a bummer.
It seems that Google is trying to fix this disappointing omission. As discovered by Mishaal Rahman at Android Authority, the Android 15 Beta 1.2 update adds a new “vibrate when unlocked” toggle to the notification cooldown settings. This toggle, when active, prevents your phone from vibrating when it’s locked. Notifications will still accumulate on the home screen, but your phone will only vibrate while you’re actively using it.
If you’re in a talkative group chat, or if your smart security camera goes insane on windy days, you’ll benefit from Android 15’s notification cooldown feature. It’s a fantastic addition to the Android platform, and it’s one of a dozen Android notification settings that I desperately want the iPhone to copy.
Oddly, Google doesn’t allow users to access the notification cooldown settings in Android 15 Beta 1. Mishaal Rahman had to tinker around to get this thing working. Of course, notification cooldown will be available in the stable Android 15 release later this year. We hope that Google provides additional settings to narrow the feature’s reach. (Notification cooldown applies to all notifications, though you can restrict it to conversations. Per-app settings don’t exist yet.)
Curious users can test the Android 15 beta on select Pixel smartphones. Just know that notification cooldown settings are hidden in the Android 15 Beta 1 release—you may want to wait for Beta 2 to drop in May. A stable, final version of Android 15 will launch this August, though it may not be immediately available on your device.
Source: Android Authority