If you use an Android device, you must be aware of the plethora of apps available on the Google Play Store. There’s an app for almost everyone and everything, whichever demographic you belong to. We love it when an app gets our job done easily and quickly. However, there are times when those same apps that you fell in love with start getting annoying. Suddenly there are tons of notifications in your Android smartphone’s notification bar. And I’m sure, many of you (even me, sometimes) wouldn’t have bothered to check those notifications and must have simply cleared them all to reduce the clutter.
Amongst those useless notifications, there might be some important ones as well. Say an important work email. Now once the notifications are cleared, you must have wondered how to get them back. Wouldn’t it be great if you can see the notification history and check if you missed out on any important ones? We show you how you can recover lost notifications on Android by seeing notification history on Android smartphone.
How to see notification history on Android using in-built settings
Step 1: ‘Long press‘ the home screen of your Android device. Doing so will show you three options at the bottom of the screen – Wallpapers, Widgets and Settings. Select the ‘Widgets‘ option.
Step 2: Selecting the ‘Widgets’ option will show you all the widgets available to you. Find and select the ‘Settings‘ shortcut widget. You will be taken to the Settings shortcut menu which will show all the shortcuts. Select ‘Notification log‘ option.
Step 3: As soon as you select the ‘Notification log’ option, a widget named Notification log will be placed on your home screen. Tap on the ‘Notification log‘ to see notification history on Android.
We performed the above steps to see notification history on Android Lollipop, that too a nearly stock version. If your device is running some other version of Android or some Custom UI of Android, chances are you may not be able to see notification history on Android by performing the above mentioned steps. If that’s true, don’t worry as you can still see the notification history. How? Read on.
How to see notification history on Android using an app
Step 1: You will need to download an app called ‘Past Notifications‘ from Google Play Store. As soon as you open it, you will be asked to ‘Enable Notification Listener‘. Tap on ‘OK‘ and you will be taken to ‘Notification access‘ menu.
Step 2: ‘Tick the check box‘ provided against the PastNotifications app and it will ask for your confirmation. Tap on ‘OK’ and you are all set.
There are 3 tabs – History, By Apps and Ignore. You can see the notification history which is recorded in these tabs. The ‘History‘ tab will show all the notifications. The ‘By Apps‘ tab will show the notifications in groups. Whereas, the ‘Ignore’ tab won’t show any notification but will only show the apps whose notifications are ignored.
The next time you clear all the notifications mistakenly, you know what to do and where to look at. We hope you will now be able to see notification history on Android and won’t miss out on any important notifications.
Tell us in the comments below if you have any other ways through which you can see notification history on Android. Also, take a look at our How-To Guides section for such useful tutorials.
