General
Welcome to the 'Android phone: Notifications' course. Notifications are a great way to catch up on things if you've been away from your phone. In this course, you'll learn what notifications are and how to open and delete them. There are many types of Android phones. If your Android phone is a different model to the ones shown in this demonstration, the steps might be slightly different, but you can still follow along.
If you ever miss a call or message on your phone, it will let you know what you've missed via notifications. Other apps on your phone can send you notifications too. These might alert you to an email, a change in the weather, or even a breaking news story. Notifications appear on the screen as your phone receives them and can disappear after a few seconds, so they can be easy to miss. Fortunately, you can read them in your phone's Notification panel. You can get notifications from lots of different apps. When notifications are received, small icons will appear in the top left of the screen next to the time. Each icon represents a particular app and will remain in place until you have read the notification. You can read these notifications in the Notification panel, which you can open by swiping down from the very top of the screen. The swipe should begin with your finger in the bezel, which is the black or white area that surrounds the screen. The Notification panel will appear.
The icons at the top are for some quick settings, which we'll look at in another course. Your notifications will appear below the quick settings icons. In this demonstration, we have four notifications in our Notification panel, including a text message, email, missed call, and a weather notification. Notifications aren't just for show. Tapping a notification will take you to the app that created it. Tap the email notification. The Gmail app will open so you can read the whole email. Some emails, text messages, or even missed call notifications might contain links to scam websites and phone numbers designed to steal your information. Only open notifications from apps, phone numbers, and email addresses that you recognise and trust. To return to the Notification panel, swipe down from the top of the screen, starting with your finger in the bezel. You'll notice that the email notification is no longer there, that's because once you've opened a notification, it will be removed from the list. Of course, sometimes you might want to get rid of a notification without reading it or having to open the app that sent it. To do this, use your finger to swipe the notification to the left and it will disappear from the panel. Some notifications have extra features.
For this demonstration, we'll swipe down on the missed call notification to look at the options that appear. You can tap Add reminder if you want to get a new notification to call them back at a later time. Or tap Call back to call back right now. Or tap Message to send them a text message instead. Tap the little arrow at the top right of the missed call notification to close it. To close the whole Notification panel, tap anywhere in the empty white space to return to the last app you were looking at. Then tap the Home button to return to the Home screen. You now know how to open and delete notifications on your Android smartphone. If you're unsure about any steps, you can rewind the video or click the chapter headings to jump to the start of a chapter. If you're ready to move on, there are many other courses to explore on Be Connected.