This does tend to be quite useful not only when you accidentally dismiss notifications, but also when you get annoyed by the sheer number of them, and you decide to remove a bunch of them just to clear the list. A notification history gives you a chance to check out all those notifications later on, without feeling the pressure to do it. In any case, you can easily enable this feature on Android. We’ll give you a step-by-step guide on how to do that, with screenshots included. For this tutorial, I’ll use the Pixel 4a with Android 11 on board. The procedure should be similar on other phones as well.
How to view your notification history on Android
The first thing you need to do is access your phone’s system settings. You can do that via the notification shade, or by locating the “Settings” app icon. It is either placed somewhere on your homescreen, or in the app tray, depending on your setup. All of you probably have it accessible in the app tray, so that’s the route we took, as shown below.
There you’ll spot the “Apps & notifications” menu, and tap it.
You’ll see the “Notifications” option, we’ll go there next.
On the Pixel 4a, the “Notification history” option is visible as soon as you enter that menu. On some other phones, you may have to scroll down to the “Advanced” section in order to access it. Regardless, once you find that option, tap it.
In the following menu, you’ll see an option at the top that says “Use notification history”, flip that switch.
That’s basically it, the notification history option is enabled. You can now simply pull down the notification shade from any screen, and you’ll see the “History” button in the bottom-left corner. Tap that, and you’ll be re-routed to the notification history list.