Android push best practices

Android push priority

Android push notifications provide the option of dictating where notifications are displayed relative to other apps’ notifications. When composing the message for your push campaign, select Notification Display Priority in the Settings tab to set a priority for your notification.

The provided options correspond to different priorities with which the notification will be displayed if a receiving user has multiple notifications. A more in-depth explanation of Android push priority and the priority options can be found here.

Android push category

Android push notifications provide the option to specify if your notification falls into a predefined category. The Android system UI may use this category to make ranking or filtering decisions about where to place the notification in the user’s notification tray.

Category	Description
None	Default option.
Alarm	Alarm or timer.
Call	Incoming call (voice or video) or similar synchronous communication request.
Email	Asynchronous bulk message (email).
Error	Error in background operation or authentication status.
Event	Calendar event.
Message	Incoming direct message (SMS, instant message, etc.).
Progress	Progress of a long-running background operation.
Promotion	Promotion or advertisement.
Recommendation	A specific, timely recommendation for a single thing.
Reminder	User-scheduled reminder.
Service	Indication of running background service.
Social	Social network or sharing update.
Status	Ongoing information about device or contextual status.
System	System or device status update. Reserved for system use.
Transport	Media transport control for playback.

Android push visibility

Android push notifications provide an optional field to determine how a notification appears on the user’s lock screen. Refer to the following table for visibility options and descriptions.

Visibility	Description
Public	Notification appears on the lock screen
Private	Notification is shown with “Content hidden” as the message
Secret	Notification is not shown on the lock screen

Additionally, Android users can override how push notifications appear on their lock screen by changing the notification privacy setting on their device. This setting will override the visibility from the push notification.

Regardless of the visibility, all notifications will be shown on the user’s lock screen if the notification privacy setting on their device is Show all content (default setting). Likewise, notifications will not be shown on their lock screen if their notification privacy is set to Do not show notifications. The visibility only has an effect if their notification privacy is set to Hide sensitive content.

The visibility has no effect on devices earlier than Android Lollipop 5.0.0, meaning all notifications will be shown on these devices.

Refer to our Android documentation for more information.