The notification system on Android is one of its strongest features, it is argued. However if you dismiss the notifications, it could really be a pain. Here’s how to view dismissed notifications.
How to Find Dismissed Applications on Jelly Bean and Above
There is no simple way to get to this setting directly in the menu, so to access it you have to add it as a shortcut to your home screen in order to use it (it can only be accessed through a widget.)
Note that this setting isn’t available on Samsung phones. If you’d like to access your notification history on a Galaxy device, we recommend the Notification Saver app.
- First, long-press on your home screen, then choose “Widgets.”
This setting could be found elsewhere depending on which phone (or launcher) you’re using, but at this point it should be fairly ubiquitous.
- Scroll down until you find the Settings option. Pull that out to the home screen.
A new menu immediately opens, with a slew of options for you to choose from—this is what the Settings widget links to.
- Find the “Notification Log” option and tap it.
From this point forward, you only need to tap this little icon to jump straight into a list of all your notifications, both current and dismissed. Note still that this won’t actually take you to said notification when you tap it. Instead, it opens all the intricate details of the notification, mostly bug tracking stuff for developers.
Un-dismiss Notifications on Android 8.0 (Oreo) with Unnotification
If you’re using a device running Android 8.0 Oreo, you can use an app called Unnotification designed to un-dismiss notifications immediately if you dismiss them by accident.
Download it from the Play Store and install it.
Setting Up and Using Unnotification
- The first time you fire up the app, you’ll need to grant it Notification Access, if it can’t see your notifications, it can’t bring them back from the dead. Tap the OK button, and then toggle “Unnotification” to the on position.
- A warning will pop up. Tap “Allow” to turn the service on.
With that done, Unnotification is ready to do its thing. To give it a try, dismiss a notification. A new notification appears in its place, asking if you’d like to undo that dismissal (that’s what Unnotification does in a nutshell).
- To bring your dismissed notification back, just tap this newly-generated notification.
If you choose not to bring back the notification, Unnotification will get rid of itself after five seconds.
There’s also an optional Quick Settings tile that allows you to bring back the last dismissed notification anytime you want even after that five second window has passed. You’ll need to add the tile to your Quick Settings panel.
Tweaking Unnotification
Unnotification’s options are very simple, offering just a few tweaks to how the app works as well as a way to blacklist apps that you don’t want Unnotification to work with.
- To add a blacklisted app, click the + button and choose the app. From then on, Unnotification won’t offer to bring back a notification for any app on the black list.
- In the Settings menu, press the cog icon in the upper right corner to get a handful of options. You can set the amount of time before Unnotification disappears, use the Quick Settings tile only, enable the undo action, and choose which actions show up on Unnotification notifications.
Here’s a breakdown:
Undo Notification Timeout: Set how long it takes for the Unnotification notification to disappear. The default is five seconds.
Use Quick Settings Tile Only: This will disable the undo notification and only use the Quick Settings tile to bring back dismissed notifications.
Enable Undo Notification Action: With this enabled, tapping the Unnotification notification will undo the last notification. Once it’s disabled, it will do nothing.
Choose Undo Notification Actions: By default, you can choose to Ignore an app (this adds it to be blacklist automatically but you can remove it in the app’s main interface) or view the Notification Log. There’s also an option to add an Undo button, or you can disable either of the two default actions.
One other thing worth noting here is that Unnotification doesn’t actually “bring back” the undismissed notification; it actually generates a new one. As such, any notification that you choose to bring back will say it was generated by Unnotification. But you can still tap on it to interact just like if it was generation by the original application.
It may not be perfect, but it does work pretty well.
