Chrome OS prepares long-awaited changes to notifications

Chrome OS notifications could get a new lease on life.

What you need to know

• New code hints at a revamp of Chrome OS notifications.
• It's not clear how the notifications will look, but the code hints at new notification grouping.
• Google may choose to bring notifications closer to those found on Android 12.

New developer code has been spotted that hints at a new UI for notifications on Chrome OS. The code was spotted by Android Police on the Chromium Gerrit developer tool and will reportedly feature a new UI.

While there's no indication of what this new UI will look like, Android Police has found evidence that it will include notification grouping. The lack of a more intelligent notification system has been a major gripe for many users on the best Chromebooks, and Google may finally be making an effort to address it. This means notifications will appear grouped when coming from the same app, giving them a less cluttered look.

The new notifications are not yet live in Chrome and are apparently early in development. There's a flag to enable the change, but it currently doesn't function.

While we may not know exactly how the UI will change, it wouldn't be surprising if Google took some inspiration from Material You in Android 12. The folks over at Chrome Unboxed have already created a mockup of what that might look like.

As seen in the first Android 12 Beta, notifications have gotten a bit of a revamp on smartphones like the Google Pixel 5. They're visually much cleaner and feature a more prominent toggle for notification groups so that users can sift through them on a per-app basis.

It may be some time before a better notification system reaches Chrome OS, but at least there is some indication that a fix is on the way. Google is already bringing some improvements to Chrome OS notifications thanks to the latest update.

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