This page contains the release notes for the Notification Launcher app, formerly found on Google Play

Discontinuing Development

  • Notification Launcher (package name me.jdvp.notificationlauncher) has been removed from the Google Play store.
  • I no longer have any personal need to update the app as it has the features I need. I hadn't been really focused on it as such, so it had long been in maintainance mode any way. The review score was dropping due to inconsistencies in how OEMs decide to kill apps and/or ignore alarms, so it seemed like it was a good time to phase out the app.
  • Further, newer updates of the Android APIs started restricting ability to query packages without explicit permission. I believe this would have ended up in a permission situation similar to what I previously faced with Statistexts. It's personally not worth it to me to focus on that and worry about it for a hobby project, so I decided it was best to just not worry about it at all.
  • If you need a copy of the apk for some reason, reach out and I can send it to you.
  • Thanks to everyone that may have used it over the past few years!

3.5.0

  • Updates outdated dependencies since the previous release was almost a year ago
  • Fixes an issue where the Share action (from other apps to Notification Launcher) sometimes does not actually trigger the scheduler to show up
  • Ensures that images load more quickly when showing the app list
  • Adds a baseline profile in order to improve cold boot time a small bit
  • Fixes an issue where the filter options show for the Past and Upcoming notifications lists even when no items are present
  • Update to support Android 12 - specifically ensures that it still works when users revoke the Exact Alarm permission. In that case, the scheduled notifications may end up being sent later than expected. Since the user would have to revoke the permission, I am not currently opting to show any info to the user in the case. For more info on this change at the platform level, see Google's documentation on Behavior changes: Apps targeting Android 12

3.4.0

  • Adds more advanced options for creating recurring notifications. For instance, this allows users to create notifications for just certain days of the week or a specific day of the month, etc. Unfortunately, this also removes the "Century" and "Millennium" option from the repeat menu
  • Fixes a bug that was causing the options drawer to not display on the "Past" and "Upcoming" tabs
  • Fixed a bug with screen flickering caused by the ratings dialog trying to show itself constantly while the conditions to be shown were met
  • By default, selecting a time on the scheduling screen that is earlier than now (for example, selecting 11 AM when it is already 2PM) will default the selection to the next day (since previous time selections just fire immediately)
  • Remove Analytics and Advertising

3.3.0

  • Ensures that the app is compatible with Android 11, since there is a new permission required on Android 11 : android.permission.QUERY_ALL_PACKAGES.
  • Adds a new setting in the Settings menu which allows users to select the default time amount that they see when scheduling notifications.
  • Fixes an issue with notifications getting duplicated on app updates (I hope).
  • Adds the ability to add links to tutorials.
  • Changes the text from "Edit" to "Duplicate" on the Past Notifications list to give a better sense of what clicking the button will actually do.
  • Update dependencies to inherit stability fixes

3.2.1

  • Cleans up the "Custom Themes" screen since user feedback stated that each item was taking up too much space.
  • Allows users to choose previously picked colors on the custom themes screen.
  • Fixes an issue where the tutorials screen would crash if the tutorial content contained links.
  • Created a Custom Theme Tutorial Video to show how to use the custom theme feature

3.2.0

  • Adds the ability to set custom themes for both light and dark modes. This functionality will require an in-app purchase. This functionality just changes how the app looks so users can use the full app without this purchase
  • Fixes issues with the tutorials screens not updating properly and fixes the fall-back images not loading properly.
  • Adds analytics so that I can tell which features are actually being used and which are not. The Notification Launcher Privacy Policy has been updated accordingly.
  • Fixes a crash revolving around obfuscation that I had seen on my own device

3.1.0

  • Updates the theming options in the app to allow for the app to follow the System Theme. This means that Notification Launcher will use the light theme and dark theme according to your phone's theme. The list of options in the Settings menu is now : Light, Dark, and Follow System Theme
  • Adds the ability to delete all notifications for a given app at once on the Past or Upcoming Notification screens by selecting to group by app and then selecting the Delete All button
  • Moves acknowledgments to a separate screen accessible via Settings
  • Update the tutorials screens. Also adds a better layout for landscape-orientation users that want to view tutorials
  • Bug Fix : Fixes repeat & quick notification behavior to account for Daylight Savings Time and Leap Year
  • Bug Fix : Fixes issue with repeating notifications that start 'Now' firing two notifications at the very start

3.0.0

  • Converts Navigation to use a Bottom Nav for ease-of-use. Can now navigate from the main page to Settings or Notification Lists in a single click rather than requiring multiple
  • Adds the Calendar feature. This allows users to see past and future notifications in a CalendarView which might be helpful.
  • Adds the version information to the Settings screen. This is mostly helpful in case I ever get contacted about an app issue so that I can verify which version(s) are having the issue
  • Updates some operations to occur in parallel so that the app experience should be a little smoother
  • Moved the tutorial section to the Settings screen
  • Adds the simple reminder option. This allows notifications to be scheduled without specifically selecting an application

2.6.0

  • Adds the ability to Share directly from Notifications to allow quick sharing to other people/apps.
  • Sharing from other apps now uses the other app's icon rather than the Notification Launcher icon
  • Adds the ability to filter Notification Lists to include only items with copyable links
  • Fix issue with the Notification Lists not including the options menu if viewing individual notifications after selecting a single app while using the grouped-by-app view
  • Fixes a bug in the dark theme where dialog buttons were too dark

2.5.0

  • Added the ability to filter apps on the app list screen using the Search bar in the app header.
  • Added the ability to filter notifications on the past and scheduled notification screens using the Search bar in the app header. This works in both the grouped-by-app and un-grouped states
  • General UI updates. Added a couple of animations and cleaned up the "Schedule Notifications Screen" to look slightly nicer and more compact.
  • Decrease app size by optimizing images and removing the last remaining PNG and instead creating a vector asset for it (the fall-back tutorial image).
  • Added advertising. I know this probably won't be the most popular update but I hope to earn some revenue on the app to be able to continue supporting development. Advertising can however be completely turned off in the settings menu if users so desire. Existing users will have ads turned off by default but they will be turned on by default for new users. In order to accommodate GDPR in the EU, a consent dialog is also shown to EU users to opt into personalized advertising, which will be off by default for users in the EU. The Notification Launcher Privacy Policy has been updated accordingly.

2.4.1

  • Fixed two small crashes occurring to me on my device. The first is due to having past notifications for apps that I have uninstalled and then switching to the "Grouped by App" view on the Past Notifications List. The second is caused by a rare case in which the app tries to draw the image for an uninstalled app which does not exist.
  • Added a "Reverse Order" option in the Notifications Lists (both Past and Upcoming). This is not stickied, so it resets every time you visit the page. I am willing to update this based on feedback though.
  • Added the Release Notes link to the Settings screen so that people have easier access to knowing what has been updated in the app.
  • Fix issue for hidden app list showing when the only hidden apps are also uninstalled. In that case, the link should not show up on the Settings screen.

2.4.0

  • Added a Launch Screen that shows instead of the initial blank-white screen that shows for a second at app start-up.
  • Speeds up the time that is required for the app list to be loaded on the main screen. Ideally, now the loader should not be shown except in circumstances where multiple hundreds of apps are installed.
  • Updated ProGuard Obfuscation Rules to decrease app size. 2.15MB -> 1.77MB
  • Chore : Updated dependencies to ingest any fixes they had made.
  • Fixed an obscure crash that never seemed to happen to anyone other than me (didn't see it in the prod logs).
  • Adds a fade to replace the jarring transition when changing to/from the dark theme.

2.3.0

  • Adds the ability to hide apps on the main screen (and un-hide them in the settings menu).
  • Updates the organization of data in the app. In the long term, this should lead to less storage used by the app. Sorry if this causes any weird upgrade issues! On a more technical level, the app had previously been storing all objects in SharedPreferences as JSON objects, as it was underestimated how large various objects would be in memory. Now, the app is using the Room library (which leverages SQLite) provided by Google's Android Architecture Components to store items in a database. This reduces overhead as app images can be stored in one row of a DB rather than in each notification item. Further it allows for updates on the data objects more easily in the future.
  • Sped up start-up time. This is a by-product of the changes I made for the above item.
  • Fixed crash seen when using an alarm for a deleted app. I didn't see any reports from this on user devices other than my own.
  • Fixed issue with Quick Notifications not actually using the correct amount of time. When creating Quick Notifications, the first time worked properly but every time after would use one-step down for the time unit (e.g. a 4 hour Quick Notification would become a 4 minute one). This is fixed but old QNs created before this update will need to be deleted in order to fix the behavior.

2.2.0 & 2.2.1

  • Adds the ability to group notifications by app in the "Past" and "Scheduled" notifications pages
  • Adds the ability to create notifications using the "second" time unit
  • Fixes an issue with recurring notifications and increases alarm accuracy. Specifically, repeating notifications did not seem to be accurate enough when using seconds. Accordingly, I've removed usages of AlarmManager's setRepeating method since it is known to be inexact. Be sure to take a look at the Alarm Manager Documentation if interested. I'm now using setExact which will trigger on time but causes more battery usage potentially
  • Adds more support for devices in landscape mode
  • Adds a few animations (mostly for caret rotation)
  • 2.2.1 was a hot-fix specifically to fix app grouping which seemingly wasn't working on a few devices

2.1.2

  • Updated some text to make instructions more clear to users
  • Differentiated time plurals (e.g. 1 hour vs 2 hours) for places that display time units (Quick Notifications and the Notification Scheduling page). This was harder than expected since android does not seem to support string-array plurals (a string-array where each item is a plurals resource)
  • Added extra padding on the bottom of the app list screen so that the floating action button could not completely cover the bottom right app in the list
  • Updates the default repeat interval from 1 minute to 1 hour

2.1.1

  • Fixes crash experienced below Android 7.1 caused by the ShortcutManager class not being able to be found

2.1.0

  • Adds Quick Notifications which allows users to create relative-type notifications over and over again with a single tap.
  • For Android 7.1 and above, this update also adds app shortcuts so that users can create frequently used notifications from the Android home screen. For these, the 3 most used shortcuts are displayed when long-pressing the Notification Launcher app but the number that can be pinned is unrestricted (pinned means dragging the shortcut to the home screen). Deleting the Quick Notifications from the app does not delete pinned notifications, so users can create, pin, then delete the quick notification in-app if they would like.
  • Fixes issues causing the tutorial list to reload too often.
  • Fixes a crash that sometimes happens when scheduling shared notifications with no link in the message text.
  • Fixes issue with editing shared notification causing shared link to no longer work.

2.0.0

  • Added ability to see past notifications.
  • Added dark theme.
  • Added settings menu.
  • Added tutorials for feature visibility.
  • Fixed navigation bugs.
  • Design tweaks.
  • Added privacy policy : Notification Launcher Privacy Policy

1.06

  • Added ability to schedule notification by relative time and make this the default selection.
  • Fix crash for entering too large of a repeat interval.
  • Fix accidental truncation of text on the scheduled list page.

1.05.1

  • Fix for silent crash occurring in the background when updating from v1.04 .
  • Fix for some notifications not showing after upgrading.
  • Added a way to notify users if for some reason a notification could not be delivered that shows to the user when re-entering the app at a later time asking them to reschedule or delete their old, unsent notifications.

1.05

  • Added support for creating notifications from the Android share menu. This allows you to share content from other apps to be reminded about later. See this video for more details:
    Notification Launcher Share Support
  • Also made a few minor design changes.

1.04

  • Fix scheduled notification list design

1.02 & 1.03

  • Added ability to see previously scheduled notifications and also edit or delete them.
  • Added ability to schedule repeating notifications

1.0 & 1.01

  • Initial creation of Notification Launcher. Can manually create notifications for all applications on your device and schedule them for any time in the future. Clicking a notification opens the app you had selected when creating the notification (if the app is still installed)
  • Initial creation of the Notification Launcher listing on the Google Play Store.