Google might let you sync your notifications between your Android devices

Rita El Khoury / Android Authority

One of the minor annoyances of using multiple Android devices is having to deal with duplicate notifications. Many Android apps can easily deliver notifications to every device you’ve installed them on, but the problem is that the statuses of these notifications aren’t synced between devices. For example, if you swipe to dismiss a notification on your Android phone, that same notification will still stick around on your Android tablet. Fortunately, Google may be working on a solution to this problem as evidenced by code in the latest Android 15 beta.

While digging through the latest Android 15 QPR1 Beta 2 update released last week, I discovered a mysterious reference to a “sync across devices” feature in the Settings app. This new “sync across devices” option is poised to appear under Settings > Notifications between “sensitive notifications” and the new “notification cooldown” option.

Although Google didn’t provide a detailed description for the feature, the fact that it’ll appear under Settings > Notifications suggests that what’ll be “sync[ed] across devices” will be your notifications. This is further backed up by the location of the class that controls the “sync across devices” option. Specifically, the SyncAcrossDevicesPreferenceController class is located under the com.android.settings.notification.syncacrossdevices path in the Settings app.

What’s also interesting about the location of this class is that it suggests the feature might not be exclusive to Pixels. Normally, classes under the com.android.settings namespace suggest they’ll be part of the AOSP Settings app, whereas classes under the com.google.android.settings namespace are only found in the Pixel-exclusive fork of the AOSP Settings app. We could be looking at something similar to the “Instant hotspot” menu item that Google added under “Wi-Fi hotspot” settings in the AOSP Settings app. Tapping the “Instant hotspot” item opens up the settings page for Android’s new instant hotspot feature that’s part of Google Play Services. Similarly, this new “sync across devices” option could open up a new page in the Google Play Services app dedicated to syncing notifications between your Android devices.

While it would make sense for Google to make notification syncing available to all Android devices as part of its new “cross-device services” suite of features, we don’t know if that’s what it’ll actually do, especially since no evidence for this feature has appeared in the actual Google Play Services app. Google could very well make this feature exclusive to Pixel devices, though we hope that’s not the case.

Whatever the case may be, we’re glad to see Google work on a feature that solves a common pain point of users who own multiple Android devices. This is the kind of feature that would be perfect for the new cross-device services suite, so hopefully, Google doesn’t make it Pixel-exclusive. Making your Android devices work better together is a long-term goal for Google, as the company is trying to create an ecosystem where it doesn’t matter what Android phone or tablet brand you have so long as it has access to the company’s apps and services.

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