I didn’t really notice till now, and searching around I see lots of complaints in various communities for different apps.
Turns out it’s intended behavior in Android 14. The only persistent thing about it is that they don’t disappear when you hit “clear all”, which is something I never do because I dismiss the ones I need to instead of nuking everything.
Feels like a big step backwards and I don’t understand the reasoning behind it. It was always possible to dismiss persistent ones if we really needed to (long tap etc)
Is there any workaround to get it back?
Unnecessary backstory:
I use a notification creation app to leave important TODOs as pinned notifications so I see them when I check my phone.
I’ve missed some and I thought I was setting them wrong. Turns out the notifications can be dismissed accidentally, making the app useless.
My use case isn’t that important, I can find some other workflow. But there are other more important apps like blood sugar monitors and home security/alert apps that use persistent notifs for functionality.
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That’s great news. I hate undismissable notifications and I always thought they were an awkward workaround for apps that needed to stay in the background and not be terminated or put to sleep by battery saving features
And as long as things keep working, I think dropping this feature is a great idea.
That’s not so great because now you don’t know when an app is running in the background.
It also makes it harder for notifications you actually do want to persist like OPs - I use AccuBatterry and don’t want to be able to dismiss by accident.
now you don’t know when an app is running in the background.
we’ve always had plenty of apps running in the background that don’t use notifications
notifications you actually do want to persist
I think notifications should never persist. There should be an entirely different UI concept for apps that need to have information displayed at all times - like a widgets drawer or shade. Having a notification displayed at all times defeat the purpose of a notification, which should be an ephemeral / momentary display of information, usually time-sensitive.
That’s not so great because now you don’t know when an app is running in the background.
Not true. This shows at the bottom of the notification shade, tells you how long the app has been running a service and lets you stop it.
Oohh thanks! TIL. Now I wonder if I need Samsung Health to be always on, to be honest…
Fair enough, I just wish it was a long tap or something instead of a swipe (or having long tap be an option that you could enable)
I like being able to dismiss some, like my voicemail or background apps
I can’t think of a single notification that I’d ever want to be unable to dismiss. Good riddance. Likely shady apps were abusing them to push ads and shit.
I’m glad my dexcom app has a persistent notification. I can check my blood sugar and rate of change with a quick swipe down rather than launching the app
Or maybe I misunderstood what OP is talking about
Yep stuff like that
I didn’t use persistent notifications much, past my little Todo thing, but I know there are a lot of apps that work like that.
If you’ve updated already, do those notifications disappear? Worth checking if you haven’t yet. Otherwise hopefully your Dexcom app adds a quick settings tile or something.
I’m still on 13. (S22+)
So hopefully there is a good workaround once Samsung rolls out the next update.
You could also simply not dismiss the notification?
It’s just too easy to accidentally dismiss one when trying to dismiss another
The current things I have them for is an internet traffic monitor and reminders to do things (usually just one thing in there), the traffic monitor might as well be in the status bar instead but I can’t get it there, and I like to have the reminders persistent so I don’t accidentally get rid of them and forget about them
I would still be able to dismiss it, just with extra steps than a swipe. Now all notifications behave the same for me.
They could have made this change in a way where you would need to long tap to force dismiss. Even if the current implementation was the default, having that option would be helpful for those that need it. I also came across complaints from people using things like HomeAssistant, where security and control notifications no longer work right.
Also if a shady app was messing with my notifications I’d just uninstall it.
It sounds like what would really be helpful is a way to “pin” or “lock” notifications so they can’t be dismissed easily. This could be a setting for all notifications from certain apps. That way apps can’t abuse it, and users can set it up how they like.
Edit: It could be an app permission as well.
This would be perfect too
Long press to pin
On the flip side of you i hate un dismissable notifications. And i especially hate a crowded notification area. So your use case would drive me insane. Sorry its borked your usage but for me being able to dismiss everything is great
Its pretty much clear for me, I periodically go through and deal with each one (respond to each message, read each alert).
When I need a persistent one, it’s usually something like “grab X from office before leaving work”. In order to dismiss those, I’d have to tap it and check off the task and it disappeared.
I’d love to get that option back, but ah well I guess
Oh that is nice. Finally! Bye bye undismissable notifications!
To each his own, but your use case seems like the worst way to accomplish what you need. There are so, so many apps that will allow you to pin a widget to one of your homescreens with a to-do; why on earth would you want to have that living in your notification shade? I have a Keep to-do widget and the Android battery widget on a second homescreen to the right of the main. Exactly as much work as pulling down the shade, except I swipe left instead of down, and no chance of accidentally clearing the persistent notification.
It’s not quite the same - the notification shade can be pulled down from anywhere, no matter what app you’re in, whereas what you describe only really works if you’re on the home screen.
I have a calendar widget that I use, but this was more for the very important “leave a sticky on the doorknob” type tasks.
I tried a widget for a while, but I found that I either didn’t swipe to that page or I didn’t like having that space blocked off by an empty widget for the periods of time when I didn’t have a task.
It worked for what I needed, but I guess I’ll explore options again
The problem is you are trying to use a system for something it was never intended for. Persistent notifications were only ever intended for long running background services.
Even for those though it’s broken now. For example, I use fkm as an indicator that my phone is dozing/charging correctly and rotation control to force apps into the orientation I want them. Both effectively require persistent notifications to work as intended.
This behavior decision by Google is a straight downgrade. It needed to be at worst togglable by the user.
This is why we can’t have nice things
