Smartphone notifications are great, keeping you abreast of what’s going on with e-mails, social media, calendar updates, and more. But there’s no denying that there are times when they can come in too fast and too furious and be pretty distracting. This might be when you’re in a meeting, and a personal group conversation is blowing up, or when you turn your phone back on after having it in Airplane Mode for a long flight, and your phone goes mad, alerting you to everything you missed.
Notification Cooldown is a new feature available with the March 2025 Android 15 update. It’s designed to help you manage an influx of notifications, minimizing sound interruptions and on-screen pop-ups. It’s easy to set up in just a few clicks.
How to enable Notification Cooldown on a Google Pixel
1. Open Settings on your Google Pixel device.
2. Select Notifications.
3. Under General, select Notification cooldown.
4.Select Use Notification cooldown and turn it to the “on” position.
How does Notification Cooldown on a Google Pixel work?
Notifications Cooldown works by counting how many notifications you get within a short period. If that exceeds a certain threshold, the phone’s volume will lower, and the alerts will be minimized for up to two minutes. You can’t change the threshold, but you can leave it in Google’s capable hands to determine what’s too much.
While Notification Cooldown can temporarily shush the notifications you don’t really need right away on the best Android phones, including those from both Google Pixel and other brands, there are some exceptions. It will not silence calls, alarms, priority conversations, and emergency alerts. That’s a good thing, of course, allowing you to quiet things like social media likes and comments and unimportant daily reminders while ensuring you don’t miss crucial happenings or details about your day.
It's a great way to still be notified of what’s important without having to turn your phone on silent to avoid an unexpected barrage of messages or other notifications that don’t require your immediate attention.
Notification Cooldown was made available to Pixel phones as a quarterly release with Android 15 and will continue to be a core part of Android 16 once it is released in Q2 2025. For now, as long as your Pixel device is updated to the latest version of Android 15, you’ll see the option in the menu and be able to enjoy its benefits.
Once set up, friends, family members, and co-workers won’t think you’re a secret spy getting intelligence on the fly when it’s really just ongoing team chatter about snacks for the weekend game or your recent X post getting a ton of attention.
Info at your fingertips
The Google Pixel 9 is a feature-rich device that provides tons of information at your fingertip. But when those pop-up notifications tend to be too much, you can use the new Notification Cooldown feature to silence the least important ones.
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