Until now, notifications permissions on Android OS has been a fire brigade affair. Power on a new Android phone and sign in to use your various apps and services, and immediately, a deluge of notifications begins to bombard you on that phone. You can then manually disable or modify notifications for each app in order to restore some sanity to your mobile experience. It is insane, and I got tired of it a long time ago. Thankfully, Android 13 addresses that with its new notifications permissions, which requires apps to ask for your permission before they can send you notifications. Eureka!
The apps now have to get your consent before. Not you scrambling to put out fires. That is exactly how it should have been from the beginning. Letting apps buzz and harass us with notifications that we didn’t ask for was a bad idea. Perhaps in the early days, it wasn’t so glaring, but as apps multiplied and users embraced them, it became a problem of epic proportions. Suddenly, you had 40 apps throwing up push notifications via audio, banners, and pop-ups all over your Android smartphone. Messy and annoying.
I spend so much time now tailoring notifications on my phone, in order to reduce the annoyance to the barest minimum. But with the new Android 13 notifications permissions, I am now in the driving seat of my phone. No app gets to send me any push notifications first without my consent. Brilliant. I can’t wait for this to arrive, so I can go back to a life of peace and quiet.
How does the new notifications permissions on Android 13 work?
By default, notifications will be off for all newly installed apps; they simply cannot send you any notifications without you enabling it. If you are updating your phone from Android 12 to 13, it means you have existing apps. How does the new permissions affect those? The system automatically grants existing apps the new permission, so they can continue to send notifications. If you don’t want them to send any, you can still manually disable notifications for them, one by one.
In all, the new notifications permissions in Android 13 is a fantastic move to wrest control from the smartphone and back in the hands of the user – you and me. You can bet that I will be updating my phone to Android 13 at the first chance I get. Where that isn’t possible, or the update is not available early enough, I shall be replacing the phone with an Android 13 device ASAP. One way or the other, I am embracing this superb feature early. As a matter of fact, it cannot come early enough.
Android 13 beta is already rolling out, and if you are a developer or an adventurer, you can get to experience it before the final public version is out. You need an eligible device. You also need to remember that beta software is not recommended for use on a device you use as your daily driver. If you understand that and will like to proceed, get Android 13 beta.
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