Android 16 may borrow Apple's notification summary feature, but there's a catch

By: Nastya Bobkova | 15.03.2025, 09:03

Apple and Android often compete with each other, but sometimes one platform borrows features from the other. Recently, it was reported that Android may receive one of these features from Apple - notification summaries.

Here's What We Know

Apple introduced this feature with Apple Intelligence, which uses artificial intelligence to create notification summaries, allowing users to get an overview of what's going on.

Although the concept of notification summaries was supposed to be a good addition, it is still fraught with bugs.

Now, it seems that Android is preparing to introduce its own version of this feature. A journalist investigated the new Android 16 beta 3 and found interesting lines of code that hint at the notification summary feature and the corresponding settings page. This indicates that Google plans to implement the feature similarly to iOS, but with one important difference.

Unlike Apple, which provides a summary of all notifications, Android will focus only on summaries of notifications from messengers. This includes notifications from apps such as Google Messages, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Slack. This approach makes sense, as notifications from conversations usually require more context. A quick summary will be helpful, especially when you have a lot of notifications in the morning and don't have time to check each one.

If Android launches this feature, many will probably compare it to Apple's version. However, it will be interesting to see how Google makes their version different or improved from the original concept.

Source: Android Headlines