We successfully activated Android 16’s Live Updates feature, allowing us to showcase what live notifications will look like.
Live Updates is a new class of notifications for ongoing activities like rideshare pickups, food delivery alerts, and navigation.
Live notifications appear prominently on the AOD and lock screen and also show up as chips in the status bar.
Last month, Google confirmed that Android 16 will introduce a new feature called Live Updates. Live Updates are special notifications for ongoing activities like rideshare pickups, food delivery alerts, and navigation. At their core is a new type of notification called a progress-centric notification, which contains a progress bar that advances over time and is optionally split into different segments. Google didn’t share what Live Updates will actually look like, but thanks to some tinkering, I managed to record my own demo of the feature. Here’s your first real look at Live Updates in Android 16.
In a previous post, we revealed that Live Updates may show up as chips in the status bar as well as permanent fixtures on the always-on display. However, in the current Android 16 Beta 2 release, this is not the case, as the Live Updates feature is not yet fully active. While the API to create progress-centric notifications is present in Android 16 Beta 2, the system currently renders these notifications as standard notifications, rather than Live Updates.