Notifications can positively be helpful, ferrying info to your cellphone about incoming messages from family members, sports activities scores, and incoming Uber rides. However they will also be a frequent distraction, inflicting your cellphone to ping and buzz all through the day and inflicting you to spend extra time checking your system than you actually ought to.
When you’ve bought a Pixel cellphone, then there is a helpful characteristic constructed proper into Android that may assist, and it is referred to as notification cooldown. I have been utilizing it ever because it arrived within the March 2025 Pixel Drop, and it makes a real distinction to notification administration.
Within the phrases of Google, notification cooldown means your cellphone “minimizes sound interruptions and pop-ups on the display screen once you get too many notifications inside a short while span”. It is managed by way of a easy toggle swap in your handset, and calls, alarms, precedence conversations, and emergency alerts aren’t affected.
use notification cooldown
This is among the easier settings to handle on Android: in your Pixel cellphone, open up the primary Settings panel, then faucet on Notifications and Notification cooldown. You get somewhat blurb about what the characteristic is and the way it works, and you may management it by way of the Use notification cooldown toggle swap.
When Android decides its time to chill down your notifications, it will flip off vibrations and decrease the amount of audio alerts for them, and you will not see any previews for notifications on display screen. They will nonetheless be queued up within the standing bar on the prime of your cellphone’s show, however that is the one indication you may get that new alerts are there.
Google would not particularly say what number of quickfire notifications have to arrive for cooldown to take impact, and you aren’t getting any type of alert that the mode has been enabled. You’ll no less than get one regular ping or buzz with the primary alert that is available in although, so you may nonetheless remember that you should examine your cellphone.
It is one thing I now go away on as a default setting, and it is significantly helpful when a flurry of updates are coming in to your group chats. The primary message triggers a notification, however the remainder are delivered with much less of a fuss – and also you’re then free to examine the newest conversations once you get round to it.
change different notification settings
Notification cooldown provides to what was already a formidable array of customization options for managing alerts on Android. It’s kind of like muting your cellphone or turning on Do Not Disturb, however it’s somewhat totally different, and a bit gentler than these strategies – and the one which I are likely to favor utilizing now.
You’ll be able to handle different notification settings by heading into Notifications from Settings. The highest menu choice right here, App notifications, allows you to management alerts on an app-by-app foundation. Many apps offer you management over how several types of notifications are dealt with too: so with Snapchat, for instance, you may present alerts for direct messages however not emoji responses or typing indicators.
Elsewhere on Settings you will get to Modes, which is the place you may arrange Do Not Disturb and variations on it. These modes are like a supercharged model of notification cooldown, providing you with choices for muting alerts at sure instances and in sure locations, whereas additionally letting notifications from essential folks and essential apps by way of.
Do not forget that many apps include their very own notification settings included as properly, which you’ll be able to tweak along with the settings which might be put in place at an Android stage. In WhatsApp, for example, you may mute any dialog for eight hours, every week, or indefinitely: Faucet the three dots within the prime proper nook of the chat, then select Mute notifications and make your choose.
