Android’s next big fix might be for the people you wish would stop texting

https://www.androidpolice.com/android-notification-rules-upgrade/

Publish Date: 2026-04-21 07:00:00

Android no longer has a notification overload problem. It has a notification quality problem.

Google has given us many tools to manage alerts, but most still treat the app as what matters most. That sounds reasonable until real life gets involved.

Usually, I don’t want to mute an entire platform. I want to mute the loud people, keep the important people loud, and push everything else into the background.

That is what makes the latest Android 17 leak so interesting. The leaked strings suggest Android may finally be getting a system that lets us shape notification behavior around both specific apps and specific people.

Google has not officially announced Notification Rules for Android 17. This is an APK teardown by Android Authority, not a public feature promise. Late-cycle Android features can change or disappear.

What we know so far about notification rules

Credit:

Lucas Gouveia / Android Police | Sinseeho / Shutterstock

In Android 17 Beta 3, the publication found strings referencing a new Notification Rules screen, a Create New Rule flow, separate selectors for App and People, and a searchable picker that supports selecting multiple entries at once.

Those same strings have also been spotted in leaked Samsung One UI 9 builds, which suggests this isn’t exclusive to Google Pixel devices.

Taken together, this looks like an active feature in…

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