Turbo Charging Your Android Notifications

Android notifications are a great way to keep your users engaged with your app. And now with Android 5.0 (Lollipop) notifications are front and center on the Android platform, which means it’s even more important for you as a developer to learn how to take advantage of this very powerful Android feature.

In this class, we will take a technical deep dive into Android notifications. You will learn how to add notifications to your app, how to customize notifications to better display the information you need to present and how to take advantage of advanced features like inbox style notifications, custom layouts and custom actions. We will also explore other important aspects of Android notifications, like compatibility with previous version of Android and the possibility to extend your app’s notifications into Android Wear devices.

Transcript

1. Turbo Charging Your Android
   Notifications
   Juan Gomez
   

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2. Intro
   Who am I?
   • Mobile Engineer at Eventbrite
   • Previously at OneLouder Apps
   • Android & Python Developer
   

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3. Why notifications?
   

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4. Anatomy of a Notification
   

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5. Building a simple notification
   

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6. Issuing the notification
   

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7. Expanded layouts
   

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8. Actions
   

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9. Building an expanded
   notification
   

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10. Issuing the notification
    

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11. Inbox style notifications
    

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12. Building an inbox-style
    notification
    

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13. Updating the notification
    

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14. Updating the notification
    

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16. Building a picture-style
    notification
    

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17. On the lock screen
    • Because notifications are visible on the lock screen, user
    privacy is an especially important consideration.
    • Notifications often contain sensitive information, and
    should not necessarily be visible to anyone who picks up
    the device and turns on the display.
    • For devices that have a secure lock screen (PIN, pattern,
    or password), the interface has public and private parts.
    • The public interface can be displayed on a secure lock
    screen and therefore seen by anyone. The private
    

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18. Lockscreen Visibility
    • Call Notification.Builder.setVisibility(…)
    • VISIBILITY_PUBLIC: Shows the notification's full
    content.
    • VISIBILITY_PRIVATE: shows basic information
    about the existence of this notification
    • VISIBILITY_SECRET: Shows only the most
    minimal information, excluding even the
    notification's icon.
    

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19. Lockscreen Visibility
    

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20. Notifications on Android
    Wear
    • Notifications and their actions are bridged over to
    Wear devices by default.
    • You can control which notifications bridge from
    the phone to the watch, and vice-versa.
    • If your app includes actions that can't be
    accomplished with a single tap, either hide these
    actions on your Wear notification or consider
    hooking them up to a Wear app, thus allowing the
    user to finish the action on their watch.
    

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21. Notifications on Android
    Wear
    

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22. Summary
    • Adding notifications to your Android app is easy.
    • Take advantage of different notification styles that
    allow you to display more relevant information at a
    glance.
    • Extend your notifications into Android Wear and
    keep your users engaged by displaying information
    on their Smartwatch.
    

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23. Useful links
    • http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/
    notifiers/notifications.html
    • http://developer.android.com/reference/android/
    app/Notification.html
    • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yc8YrVc47TI
    

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24. Thank You!
    Twitter: @_juandg
    Email: jgomez@eventbrite.com
    Lanyrd: lanyrd.com/profile/juandg/
    

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