This post was published 9 years, 6 months ago. Due to the rapidly evolving world of technology, some material it contains may no longer be applicable.
Notifications are pretty inconsistent on Android. You may find two apps that do basically the same thing, but have totally different actions that can be taken from the notification. In Android N Google is taking steps to counter that, and the best part? Most app developers don’t need to change a thing.
Android N features integrated quick reply from the notifications shade. It’s much improved over the last iteration found in Google Messenger and Hangouts. Rather than bringing up a pop-up reply box, it all takes place directly in the notification. The best part is that it operates using the API designed to allow Android Wear access to messages. The majority of messaging apps already support Android Wear, meaning the quick reply featured in N already works.
There’s another bonus here too. Apps that didn’t plan on supporting Wear will likely want to make use of everything N has to offer, so when they implement this API they’ll be allowing access to Android Wear anyway.
When a new feature crops up in a preview release initially things are almost always buggy and difficult to use. However, because this is quite simple and is based on something that has already existed for quite a while, we’ve found it is working pretty much flawlessly already. There is still room for improvement, perhaps adding a “read” option into the mix. But otherwise, this is great.
