How-To

How to Minimize Notifications on the Android Status Bar

By Brian Burgess

Updated October 25, 2023

If you want to have a less distracting experience on your Android home screen, you can minimize notifications on the Android status bar. Here’s how.

If you don’t like app notifications clogging up the status bar on your Android device, you don’t have to disable them entirely. Instead, you can minimize notifications on the Android status bar.

This option hides Android app notifications from the status bar but still displays them in the notification shade.

If you don’t want to turn off all app notifications completely, we’ll show you how to minimize them to achieve a cleaner home screen experience on your Android phone or tablet.

Locating Minimized Notifications on the Android Status Bar

If you’re an Android user, you’ve undoubtedly noticed several app notifications on your phone’s status bar in the top left corner.

If you swipe a notification away, you’ll lose it—you’d need to open up the app from your home screen to investigate it further. By minimizing the notifications, you’ll still be able to access them from the notification shade.

They won’t appear on the status bar, however.

How to Hide Status Bar Notifications on Android

If you want to hide status bar app notifications on Android, follow these steps. In this example, we’re using a Samsung Galaxy phone. The steps on other Android versions and devices may vary slightly, but they won’t be too dissimilar.

1. Swipe down from the top of your screen to display the notification shade and tap the Settings (gear) icon.
2. Tap the Notifications option from the menu.
3. Under the Notifications section, tapthe App notifications option.
4. Select the app you want to minimize notifications. You’ll need to tap the name of the app, but don’t toggle off the switch.
5. Under the Alerts section, select the Silent option.
6. Select Notification categories.
7. A list of the types of notification categories for the app will be listed.
8. Tap the notification category you want to be minimized and toggle on the Minimize notification switch. For example, we’re working with the Gmail app and minimizing notifications for new emails.
9. In this example, we’re minimizing miscellaneous Gmail notifications.

Once you follow these steps, notifications for that app will no longer appear in the status bar on the home screen.

How to Minimize Other Apps on the Android Status Bar

Unfortunately, there isn’t a button or switch that minimizes everything on your status bar. You’ll need to go through each of your installed app’s categories and minimize the notifications you don’t want to appear in the status bar.

For instance, in the example below, we’re minimizing notifications from Spotify Music.

While app notification icons will be minimized and not visible in the status bar, you can still view them by swiping down the notification shade.

Managing Your Notifications on Android

If you want a clean and less distracting home screen, you can minimize notifications on the Android status bar using the above steps. Plus, you can still see all notifications by swiping down the notification shade.

There are other ways to get more from app notifications on Android. For example, sometimes, you dismiss an essential notification and want it back. To prevent the problem, you can view notification history on Android.

Also, if you want to get notifications from Android on your PC, you can connect your Android phone to Windows 11.