Joe Maring / Android Authority
TL;DR
- The latest builds of One UI 7 have added Live Notifications for media apps that display an ongoing notification for playback control.
- This extends to apps like Spotify, YouTube, and YouTube Music when playing content locally or casting and to apps like Netflix when casting.
The One UI 7 hype is real, as Samsung finally gets around to updating its devices to Android 15, months after the platform update was released and others got on board. As people get their hands on the update, they are spotting features that haven’t been clearly mentioned as part of the official changelog. As it turns out, One UI 7 is implementing a live notification for any app that puts media controls in the notification shade.
My colleague Zac Kew-Denniss spotted that newer One UI 7 builds (i.e., those with the April 2025 security patch) can display a live notification for any app that puts out an ongoing media playback control in the notification shade.
Samsung’s official One UI 7 changelog woefully under-explains this feature as it entirely skips mentioning media controls:
- Real-time notifications for ongoing tasks: Real-time notifications are displayed on the lock screen Now bar, top of the notification panel, and status bar to help you understand ongoing tasks. You can check the status of timers, voice recordings, and exercise in real time, and quickly perform related tasks.
This behavior can be noticed on apps like Spotify, YouTube Music, and YouTube when playing back content locally or through a casting session. Apps like Netflix don’t display a notification when playing back locally, but you can get a live notification if you initiate a casting session.
To see this feature, you need the newer One UI 7 builds on either the stable branch, like the builds rolling out for the Galaxy S24, or newer betas. You won’t spot this feature on early One UI 7 builds, even the stable releases that started off with the Galaxy S25, which is why this feature flew under the radar.
Sammyguru brought attention back to the feature, noting that it supports “cross-device sync.” The report doesn’t properly contextualize it with more information, but presumably, it means that you can control YouTube playback on other devices even without being connected to the same Wi-Fi network.
YouTube offers playback controls for connected smart devices already, but you need to be on the same Wi-Fi network, and it’s a standard notification, not a live notification. This setting is present under your Android TV’s settings, under the Google Cast option as “Allow others to control your cast media.” Here are screenshots of what that looks like on my Google Pixel 9 Pro XL running the latest Android 16 Beta:
You’ll see that the Cast controls in the standard notification are fairly barebones (and require you to be on the same Wi-Fi network as the TV). In contrast, One UI displays a much richer live notification and can do so for YouTube despite not being on Wi-Fi.
Have you received this live notification on your One UI 7 device? If so, let us know in the comments below!
