Google announced Android L to the masses at their I/O event, and with it they introduced their new “Heads Up” notification system. These notifications are part of the new Material Design UI and are sure to change the way we interact with notifications on our devices. One of the most interesting features of Android L demos in Google I/O 2014 is the newly designed notifications, where a notification floats on top of everything else on your screen and you can either swipe it to dismiss it or tap it to respond. You will also be able to interact with them.
If you’re one of those who can’t wait until the actual Android L update is here already, there are some apps now that can give you a preview of what it will be like, well at least as far as notifications go. Floatify is one of the earlier apps that does that, and it promises to give your smartphones a smarter way of dealing with notifications. Released just last week, now it has been updated with even more new features.
After installing Heads Up, tap on Start button to enable it. On the very next stage, you need to check Heads Up to let it control notifications under “Notification Access”.This app doesn’t control all the notifications after activation. In fact you have to whitelist the apps for which you want to get floating notifications on screen. You can also later remove any app from the Whitelist by simply tapping and holding down on the desired app.This app also provides few more settings to further fine tune the notifications. You can enable them only on full screen mode, like while watching movies etc or get them everywhere. You can also set the duration by dragging the slider from 1 to 10 seconds.
Done! Now you need to see how the app works. To do this, we opened the app once again and asked someone to send us a WhatsApp message. They did, and it worked, it was smooth and reliable. If you want to reject a notification, you simply swipe it to the side, or open it by double tapping.
The app let you customize the style of notification, like where the pop-up will appear, animation, background, etc. You can also change the notification background color, size, position, opacity, text, icons, and more.
This app has both free and paid versions. The paid version will unlock all features like Smooth animations, Unlimited text filter words, Quiet hours, Wake screen on notification, Custom timeout settings for popup, Privacy settings for apps, Icon pack support, Backup & restore functionality, and much more.
You can enable/disable the pop-up notifications completely or disable it for a particular app and you can set the duration and gestures for those pop-up notifications. It lets you assign unique notification tone for each and every individual app installed on your device. Every option and settings you open in the application will have some locked premium features. If you think that will be very useful, you can purchase the premium version of the app from the Play Store. Try this app on your Android device and share your experience with us in the comments. Thanks for reading, do share this post with your friends.