One UI 6.1 keeps messing with Android's best feature — I need Samsung to stop it

People often ask me why I stick with Android over iPhones, and my answer always boils down to one major gripe: iOS notifications drive me crazy. It's not just a minor annoyance, it's a fundamental design flaw.

Here's the deal: iOS forces you to swallow everything an app throws your way. Want to be alerted about your delivery order? You better be prepared for a barrage of ads, promotions, and other junk. It's like the app developers hold your notification preferences hostage.

Thankfully, Android doesn't play that game. Apps have dedicated notification settings within them, allowing you to choose what kind of alerts you actually want to see. Take Twitter, for instance. I can silence retweet and follower notifications, while still getting notified about replies and direct messages. It's all about having control over what deserves my attention and what doesn't.

Notification management on iOS is abysmally poor. Android does it better thanks to channels.

Ugh, app notifications used to be a nightmare! You had to hunt through each app's settings, hoping to find a way to silence the spam and pointless updates. And even then, some apps just didn't care, blasting you with everything they had.

Thank goodness for Android's notification channels! Since Oreo, apps can categorize their notifications into different groups. This means you can easily silence specific types of alerts, like promotions or recommendations, while still getting the important stuff like delivery updates or navigation instructions. It took a while for developers to catch on, but now most apps use this feature.

In Google Maps, for instance, I can silence the Q&A notifications but keep directions and transit alerts. It's even better on Pixel phones, where tapping a notification instantly shows you the channel it belongs to, making it super easy to silence the culprit of any notification overload.

Honestly, notification channels are a game-changer. I finally have control over what disrupts my day and what deserves my attention. No more notification chaos for me!

How Samsung is messing with Android’s notification channels

The latest Samsung phones, like the Galaxy S24 series, come with the One UI 6.1 software update. Unfortunately, this update removes the ability to fine-tune app notifications. Instead of picking and choosing which types of alerts you want to see from each app, you're stuck with an all-or-nothing approach. This means you either get bombarded with every single notification from an app, or miss out on everything entirely.

One UI 6.1 disables notification categories for everyone, even if you had previously set them up.

The new One UI 6.1 update is messing with my notifications! After updating, all my carefully chosen notification settings for each app seem to have vanished. It's like an on/off switch now, with no way to control the different types of alerts I used to get.

To make things worse, tapping a notification doesn't even highlight the category it belongs to anymore. So, figuring out what kind of notification it is feels like a mystery to be solved (usually by digging into notification history, which is a whole other story). This is definitely not user-friendly!

How to fix notification categories in One UI 6.1

My Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra started acting up with notifications, so I reached out to my friend Zachary, a huge Samsung fan, to see if he could help. Thankfully, he did! He found an article on Android Police explaining that One UI 6.1 has a new feature that lets you control notification categories for each app. This was exactly what I needed! To enable it, just head to Settings > Notifications > Advanced settings and turn on the toggle for "Manage notification categories for each app." Problem solved!

Enabling this setting unlocks a new level of notification control. Once activated, you'll see a "Notification categories" section appear right below the regular notification settings for each app. Take the Galaxy Store app, for instance. After turning on the toggle, you'll notice new categories pop up at the bottom of the screen.

The app settings offer a great level of control over notifications. You can see all the notification categories a developer has created for their app, allowing you to fine-tune them individually. For instance, in the Galaxy Store, I immediately disabled "Instant plays" and "Events" since they hold no interest for me. While I kept the other categories active, I can still silence specific ones like app update notifications, ensuring they don't disrupt my workflow.

Just revert this change, Samsung

Whoa, Samsung, this One UI 6.1 update is a real head-scratcher. Hiding notification channels, one of Android's best features, is a major bummer for users. It throws all the progress away in giving us control over app alerts and throws our carefully customized notification settings into chaos. Honestly, it feels like a big step backward for Android.

Making it an opt-in feature and automatically turning it off for everyone during the update is just mind-boggling. Imagine having your notifications perfectly tuned, then suddenly you're bombarded with everything or left in the dark – with no clue what happened! This iOS-ification of One UI 6.1 has gone way too far. Samsung, this is a big, fat BAD move.