At the end of the day, we use our phones to connect with people that matter most to us. But overtime, they have become multi-purpose tools and people became just one piece of that pie.
In Android 11, we've reconnected back to those roots and put people front and center.
We created a dedicated section for all Conversations to appear at the top of your notifications, no matter how many notifications may be present. (For context, Android notifications don't appear in chronological order but in an opinionated manner that puts all of the important things at the top.)
Priority Conversations
Through user research, we know that notifications from people are the most important kind of notifications. That said some people are also more important than others.
Recognizing this, we added a system level way to mark specific conversations as Priority to further differentiate important conversations from others.
In the example below, imagine yourself as a parent that is excited to hear some news of an upcoming report from the school principal.
As more notifications are received throughout the day, the principal's messages would typically get pushed lower in the list, causing you to miss out on important updates.
We can remedy this by setting this conversation to Priority.
Priority conversations always:
-
Appear at the top of the notification shade
-
Never appear bundled as a notification group when there are many notifications from the same app (this way priority conversations always stand out!)
-
Appear as separate people avatars in the status bar (instead of using the app icon)
-
Include highlighted ring in different parts of the system such as in home screen people widgets and Bubbles
Adding one last bit of delight, Priority conversations also appear as people on your lock screen instead of using the app's icon.
People are always at the heart of what we celebrate on Android.
Thanks for reading!
Learn more at android.com/android-11.