Android
Android 16: Easy notification options coming to Android lock screens
If your phone gets lots of notifications every day, your lock screen can get messy. This makes it tough to see your nice background and find the important alerts. Android 16 might fix this with a new way to show notifications.
Back in November, there was a cool but hidden feature in Android 15 QPR2 Beta 1 called “lock screen notification minimalism.” It made your lock screen cleaner by putting all notifications into one small spot under the clock. You could tap this spot to see all notifications.
In the latest Android 15 QPR2 Beta 3, this feature isn’t there anymore. Instead, there’s a new choice for how notifications look on your lock screen. In the settings, under “Notifications on lock screen,” you can now decide if you want notifications in a tight “compact” mode or in a full list.
The “full list” is set as the default, so Android 16 won’t make everyone use the compact view. Even with compact mode, some notifications might still show fully. We don’t know for sure yet, but it seems like important ongoing notifications might always be visible.
Android 16 might also let you hide notifications you’ve already seen and silent ones, making your lock screen even clearer. These options aren’t active in the current beta, so they might not be in the final Android 15 version. I’ll keep an eye out to see if they make it into Android 16.