Android N, while at its earliest stage yet, already comes with many APIs and features. Two of the most interesting additions involve the notification shade and Java 8 languages.
Android N Preview proves that Google developers are constantly working for greater changes with more features to offer. Based on the new APIs and features, the upcoming software is vowed to take a quantum leap from the already impressive Marshmallow build.
Direct Reply & Bundling on Notification Shade
While there was already too many enhancements going on with the notification shade since Lollipop, Google seemed to be more inclined at perfecting functionality of this feature. Notification shade gets more power and control with Android N, as Google puts direct reply and notification bundling in this feature.
Direct reply does not seem exciting as it technically is. This addition primarily contributes to the multitasking ability of the notification shade. Users no longer need to do launch desired apps right on the home interface or do quick tasks because Android N brings the direct reply API right on the notification shade.
All messages allowed to be show up on the notification shade can now be replied to as soon as the message appears without having to go the main app. Options on screen will include "reply", "archive", and "snooze".
However, this API is only for custom implementation, which means Android developers have the power to modify the way this feature will appear on their own way using the new Remote Input API. This was already made available to Android Wear first.
Notification Bundling
Aside from direct reply, bundling is another API contributing to a more useful notification shade. Notification bundling lets users expand a bunch of notifications on the notification shade into four smaller units and attend to them individually without having to launch an app.
Say, the notification shade now has eight messages from eight different senders. With bundling, these eight messages can be trimmed down to four on the shade to allow users to reply to each message. The other four will not be ditched from the shade as they will only be bundled. After attending to the first four messages, users can now swipe down on that bundled messages using two fingers and attend to them as well. It will be available for developers here.
