Android smartphones keep displaying notifications related to either the Android operating system or those related to various user installed apps. For example, you receive notifications when you receive a new text message, a new email message, when you battery has reached a very low charge state and more. You can swipe these notifications to the left or the right of your screen to dismiss them. Sometimes when you have dismissed a notification, you realize that it was an important message. But having dismissed the notification, you cannot always view them through their respective apps especially the notifications coming from Android system.
However, there is a workaround using which you can check some of the past notifications in your Android device using the notifications log. There are two limitations to this method : the log displays the notifications in the raw format and the log does not contain all the past notifications. But viewing the notification log is the only possible way to find the dismissed notifications and here is how you can do it:
- Long tap on any empty space on the home screen of your Android device and select Widgets from the menu that appears.
- Scroll down the list of all the available widgets and select Settings widget (it looks like a cogwheel icon). Drag and drop it somewhere on the home screen of your device.
- You will see a list of options for the new shortcut. From this list select Notification log.
- Now you can tap on the newly created shortcut icon (Notification log) and it will display a long list of all the notifications that you have dismissed before.
The notifications displayed in the list are in the raw format and you may have to carefully find the actual content of the notifications from the raw data, but it is the only possible way to find the previously dismissed notifications or messages.