WhatsApp Releases Notification Channels For Android Oreo, But It Just Does Not Work

WhatsApp Is Testing A Private Reply Feature for Groups

As you may have heard this week, WhatsApp has rolled out Notification Channel settings for all Android Oreo devices. Notification Channels are visible on any app’s App Info screen and make it very easy for users to control alert types for each different category of notifications. Often apps only have a on or off toggle in their own settings, which may not give users the best experience.

For WhatsApp, this meant users could finally fine-tune exactly what to do with each type of WhatsApp notification. Want messages from contacts to pop-down and make a noise, but want your group messages to stay silent and hidden even from the status bar? You got it! Don’t want any messages to make a peep on your phone? Yes, it’s possible to do this in Notification Channels with one toggle, and without digging into WhatsApp’s settings.

At least this is what it should have been. But sadly, it is broken. Even after changing alerts to our preferred setting, the app keeps restoring them back to the default settings of ‘Urgent’.

I tested this on my Galaxy S8, which is currently running a beta version of Android 8.0 Oreo. Initially, I thought only the message notification option was broken. So, I decided to check all the options like Group notifications, Media playback, etc. and all of them failed to work for me. In fact, it failed to work on most of the devices which we tested here at Beebom.

WhatssApp App Notification

To reproduce this bug, adjust your Group or Message Notification settings from Urgent to High or Medium. Then wait for a message to come, and watch it pop-up on screen, unlike what you just set.

 

Admittedly it’s more of a nuisance than a real bug, but it’s nevertheless annoying for those who really want control over WhatsApp alerts.

That being said, the notification channel feature is not limited to WhatsApp alone. As we had reported earlier today, even Twitter seems to have had this feature. Hence, it is safe to say that more and more app developers will jump and make it available to the users. However, we just hope to see it working.

We’d like to know your thoughts on this. Have you had a chance to test it out on your smartphone running on Android Oreo, let us know by dropping a comment down below.

comment Comments 11
  • Attila says:

    same problem on Note 8.. (Android 8.0.0)
    terrible..

  • Bob says:

    It definitely is a pain in the ***. What puzzles me is that they do not get it fixed, it’s the 4th of April for crying out loud !!! #S8 #Oreo

  • WHY says:

    IT happened after the nougat update and now it is happening again with OREO. the notifications just keeping getting in the way.

    • WHY says:

      This works for me too !!!

  • Emre says:

    Nothing actually helps. I really regret to upgrade to Oreo. Very disturbing and annoying. How come they still have not solved the issue

    • eachtime says:

      We all need to give them 1 star rating and a comment complaining about the situation.

      Enough people do this and they will be forced to fix this

  • matro says:

    Hi there, same issue here (and we’re on March!), Oreo 8.0 on a OnePlus device.

  • eachtime says:

    This is really annoying. It seems it happens in all apps connected to contacts. We should be able to override it!
    The only workaround I see is to define manually define priority for each contact/group which is ridiculous

  • Dharma says:

    I’m also facing the same problem. When mailed whatsapp regarding the issue they haven’t understood what the issue is.. Do you got any fix for this??

  • Nathan says:

    Thank you! Whatsapp responses to me have been at best pathetic and at worst infuriating. They do NOT acknowledge the problem so thank YOU for acknowledging it. I do not want whatsapp message contents showing on my screen when they come in. If I switch the “Importance” away from “Urgent” it immediately reverts back to “Urgent” as soon as I get a text. Within the app settings “Popup notification” is set to “No popup”. Phone is a Nexus 5X running Android 8.1.0.

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