With Android 16 launching sooner than expected, it's no wonder we're hearing more and more about what the upgrade will entail, and the latest rumor to pop up online (via Android Authority) is a brand new organizational feature for your notifications.

The code for this feature was discovered by Mishaal Rahman in the latest Android 15 QPR2 beta release. Apparently, the main purpose of this new feature is to silence and group notifications that are similar to each other. That way, you won't keep getting bothered by the same alerts every time something trivial changes.

Similar notifications seem to be grouped into several different categories, such as promotions, news, social, and recommendations. I know exactly which categories I will be ignoring the most, especially since the bundle menu promises to “override the app's own notification settings”. Spoiler alert: it's the “Promotions” category.

I don't like getting promotional notifications on my phone. Because, frankly, I don't care that Domino's is offering half off an already overpriced pizza, or that if you order within 30 seconds you get X number of free photo prints. If Android 16 could put them all together and make them easier to ignore, I would absolutely be in favor of this feature.

This is not the only notification change Google could implement in Android 16. We've seen evidence that a “notification cooldown” feature is in the works, supposedly coming to Pixel phones as part of the December feature drop. However, code from the Android 16 Developer Preview suggests that a slightly different version may be coming as part of the new software.

The goal behind this feature is to gradually lower the volume of notification alerts when individual apps bombard you with notifications. So if your group chat is constantly pinging, you will no longer get the irritating “ping” message every few seconds; hopefully by the time Android 16 is released, notifications will be much less annoying than they are now.

Android 16 is said to be released in the spring, and rumors suggest it could be released in early June. More information will come in the coming weeks and months as Google releases the next developer preview and eventually a beta version.