Android 11 Developer Preview 3 is once again changing the way notifications behave in the shade. Users are now allowed to swipe away all notifications, but messages from apps with ongoing processes will be moved into a new, minimized shade.
The new shade is called “Apps active in background” and is delineated by a solid, thin white line.
Apps performing background tasks — through our testing, media playback, screen recording, and USB connection management, but presumably includes many other tasks — that have had their notification swiped away will appear in this new section in minimized black bars. Tapping on one of the bars will bring the full notification back above the fold. A notification cannot be snoozed nor can one access its associated app’s notification settings while it is minimized.
Left: View in lock screen notifications / Right: Includes Spotify as an app active in background
This new paradigm can help users keep track of their apps, but limit clutter in doing so. Design elements, as 9to5Google points out, may be refined over time, though, so we’ll keep track of this as we close in on Android 11’s public release.
