Android N's Redesigned Notification Shade And Quick Settings Panel

Notifications

The Android N images in this post are mockups based on what we've seen—sorry, we can't post the actual screenshots. The first thing you'll notice is the notifications are full-width, and the separation between items is less distinct. Each item in the list also includes a line with the app that produced the notification. That information is available in the current notification UI, but you have to long-press to see it. Notifications also appear to be able to display some limited color text elements. App icons are smaller and less obvious as well. See below for a comparison of the old vs. new UI.

                        

Quick Settings

When you open the quick settings panel, you get a really cool sliding animation as the compressed bar of toggles move down to the full QS. Like the notifications, it's full-width now. The expandable WiFi and Bluetooth icons aren't visible in the version we've seen either. There's an edit button here, indicating that Google is bringing the UI tuner options into the main quick settings. Hopefully that means the feature will be a little more fleshed out.

There appears to be pagination of the quick settings now as well, so you can put less frequently used toggles on the next page. See below for a comparison between the old and new UI.

This is all based on an early version of Android N, so it's possible Google will change the way things work in the final build. You may also notice there's an app drawer icon in our mockup; we haven't seen anything to indicate that it has been removed from Android N yet. Again, this is still early. Google is expected to show off Android N at I/O in a few months. We're trying to get more details on Android N, so stay tuned.