You can check your missed notifications without switching between apps
Similar to Inbox Zero on Gmail and Outlook, you may prefer to keep your Android phone’s notification center clean. While dismissing notifications gives a sense of accomplishment, you might miss important alerts. If you accidentally dismiss a promotional alert from a shopping app or a comment on a Google Docs document, you don’t need to open the app to check the missed alert. You can find it in the notification history menu in Settings. We cover the steps for standard Android UI and One UI running on the best Samsung Galaxy phones.
Android system saves only 24 hours of notification history on your phone. These 24 hours should be enough to realize your mistake and check the missed alerts from the Settings menu. It’s also a sensible move to store a day’s notification history on the phone. Storing a long backlog of notification history may slow down your Android phone.
Enable and check notification history on Android
Many OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) disable notification history on their Android offerings. Follow the steps below to enable it.
- Swipe up from the homescreen to open the app drawer menu.
- Find and open the Settings app (it looks like a gear icon).
- Open Notifications.
- Select Notification history.
- Enable the Use notification history toggle from the following menu.
You can now dismiss any alert from the notification center. The same alert appears in the Notification history menu.
Enable and check notification history on Samsung Galaxy phones
Samsung uses a different Android skin called One UI. The steps to enable and check notification history differs on a Samsung Galaxy phone.
- Swipe up from the homescreen and open Settings (the one with a gear icon).
- Scroll to Notifications.
- Open Advanced settings from the following menu.
- Select Notification history.
- Enable the Notification history toggle.
- Swipe down from the top to open the notification center. Dismiss any app alerts and check the same from the Notification history menu.
Notification history shows alerts in chronological order, with the most recent at the top. However, the system doesn’t offer a way to place a notification history shortcut on the homescreen for easy access.
Disable notification history on Android
Notification history doesn’t come with biometric protection. Anyone with access to your phone can hop into Settings and check your last 24 hours of notifications. Sometimes, you may not want the system to save confidential notifications from apps like Signal or Telegram. Since there is no way to disable notification history for individual apps, you must disable the function entirely.
- Open Settings and go to the Notification history menu (refer to the steps above).
- Disable the Notification history toggle and confirm your decision.
The option deletes your notification history. You can enable it again to start keeping your history again, but the system won’t restore your current notification history.
Snooze notifications on your Android phone
Instead of dismissing notifications left and right, snooze alerts and receive them at a convenient time. Once you enable notification snoozing from your Android phone’s settings menu, you’ll see a clock icon beside each notification. You can tap it to snooze notifications for one hour. You can even pick different time duration like 15 minutes, 30 minutes, or 2 hours. Read our separate post to learn how to snooze notifications on Android.
Never miss an important message on your phone
Keeping up with notifications can be a hassle, but Android gives you a lot of flexibility when dealing with them. Read our dedicated post to learn the best tips to manage notifications on your Android phone better.
