Google has improved the notifications system on the Android OS a lot over the years, introducing various intuitive features along the way. Take, for instance, the ability to snooze them for a particular amount of time, or even block notifications from an app altogether.

However, there is one particular option which Google has not yet implemented in its Android OS. We’re talking, of course, about the ability to view the history of all notifications you have received. Taking things a step further, we’d love to undo the action of dismissing one every so often.

So Many Apps, So Many Notifications

Many of us have multiple apps installed on our device, each of which sends out numerous notifications throughout the day. While a lot of people tend to view them almost immediately, some of us just dismiss them for the time being. Perhaps we think we’ll open the app and view them later, ultimately forgetting completely about them after a while.

Thankfully, there are a few simple solutions where you can not only view recently dismissed notifications, but also view the entire history of those received on your device. It’s nice and easy and the best way to start.

The first solution is rather simple and works on most devices. To do it you simply have to add a settings widget to your home screen. Specifically, you’ll add the “notification log” to the phone’s main panel.

Tapping it you’ll get a history of notifications and the time at which they arrived. They won’t be pretty, but the information is there.  If you open a message from Hangouts, for instance, you’ll have to look close for the content of the text.

It’s worth pointing out that this feature seems to be missing on the default launcher and experience of Samsung devices. If you are own a Samsung phone, you might want to install Nova Launcher, or an other 3rd party launcher.

Step 1

Long press on your home screen and select the widgets option. Now scroll until you find the settings widget and select it.

If you are a Samsung user and using Nova Launcher, you might have to select the Nova activities widget instead.

Step 2

Now, scroll until you find the Notification log under the settings Widget and just select it to add it to your home screen.

You can now just open this widget to view your notification history and interact with them to view more details like the app it was sent from and the time.

A better, cleaner solution

If you prefer a simple and a more polished interface with less technical details, you may want to download and install Catch notify from the Google Play Store. The app displays your notification log history in a simple and a clean interface and you can open any log for viewing its content and time it was sent.

Undo your notification dismiss action

If you just want to view the last notification you dismissed by mistake instead of your entire log history, there is an Android app for that, too. Unfortunately, you can only use this method if your smartphone runs Android Oreo 8.0 or newer.

The app is called Unnotification and displays a new notification every time you dismiss a notification on your device, asking whether you want to undo the action. You can set the app to not display the undo option for certain apps.

Once you install the app on your Android device, you just have to grant the app notification access permission and it will start doing its work. The app will display a notification every time you dismiss a notification from an app, unless you have blacklisted the app, asking whether you want to undo the action or not.

The undo option will automatically display after a specified time period. You can also modify the settings to display the undo option only when you click on the app tile on your quick settings panel.

If you click on the undo option from the app, the notification which you just dismissed will be restored and you can just tap on it to open the corresponding app on your device.

Let us know in the comments below if you have any questions regarding any of the above mentioned methods and also which method do you prefer.