Retrieving Status Bar Notifications for Android Devices

June 06, 2026 · 7 min read · Mobile Testing

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Retrieving Status Bar Notifications for Android DevicesRetrieving Status Bar Notifications for Android Devices

Retrieving Status Bar Notifications for Android Devices

Published on
February 19, 2020
Updated on
Published on
February 8, 2022
Updated on
 by 
 Jonathan LippsJonathan Lipps
Jonathan Lipps
status bar notifications

For most of the account of Appium, it has not be possible to inspect notifications received on an Android gimmick, especially the & quot; status bar & quot; notifications you can only look at by pull them down from the status bar. To automate verification of telling received, the brute-force approach meant navigating to this telling view and hoping to get lucky read the text elements on that page. More latterly, the Appium team figured out a way to read notifications via theAppium Settingsassistant app. This is a little app which is installed alongside an Appium session, and facilitates device-level functionality that is not possible merely through UiAutomator2 or Espresso.

Basically, the Appium Settings app can be granted the permission to read any incoming presentment. It can then save these telling for recovery by the master Appium process using ADB. All of this complexity is wrap up in one Appium command (first released in Appium 1.16):

driver.executeScript (`` mobile: getNotifications '');

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For this command to work, the Appium Settings app must of trend be granted presentment read permissions. This can be do manually in the & quot; Notification Access & quot; area of your Android system settings (the precise way to navigate to this panorama differs based on gimmick). Or, you could automate it using Appium as part of your gimmick provisioning steps.

At the moment, the return value for this method is a bit complex. In JSON, it would seem something like this:

{`` statusBarNotifications '': [{`` isGroup '': false, `` packageName '': '' io.appium.settings '', `` isClearable '': mistaken, `` isOngoing '': true, `` id '' :1, `` tag '': zilch, `` notification '': {`` title '': null, `` bigTitle '': '' Appium Settings '', `` schoolbook '': nothing, `` bigText '': '' Keep this service lam, so Appium for Android can properly interact with several system APIs '', `` tickerText '': null, `` subText '': null, `` infoText '': null, `` templet '': '' android.app.Notification $ BigTextStyle ''}, `` userHandle '' :0, `` groupKey '': '' 0|io.appium.settings|1|null|10133 '', `` overrideGroupKey '': null, `` postTime '' :1576853518850, `` key '': '' 0|io.appium.settings|1|null|10133 '', `` isRemoved '': false}]}

But of course, in the Appium Java customer, we will not get a JSON response, so it will be our job to throw the response appropriately:


Mapnotifications = (Map) driver.executeScript (`` mobile: getNotifications '');

And we & # x27; ll need to keep molding as we navigate through the target. Basically, we have a main key statusBarNotifications, which returns an array of notification objects. Each of these apprisal objects itself has a lot of metadata affiliate with it (you can use this metadata to filter by the package ID of your app, for illustration). The notification key of this object has the primary message we & # x27; re looking for, including the title and the schoolbook of the notification.

This technique is especially powerful because, having granted the especial license to Appium, you can read notifications for any app on the device.

That & # x27; s it! Check out a full example where we walk through each notification received since Appium depart, and print it out to the console, do certain we appropriately choose the type of notification text and rubric which has substance:

public class Edition106_Android_Notifications {private String APP = `` https: //github.com/cloudgrey-io/the-app/releases/download/v1.10.0/TheApp-v1.10.0.apk ''; private AndroidDriver driver; @ Before public void setUp () throws Exception {DesiredCapabilities capabilities = new DesiredCapabilities (); capabilities.setCapability (`` platformName '', `` Android ''); capabilities.setCapability (`` deviceName '', `` Android Emulator ''); capabilities.setCapability (`` automationName '', `` UiAutomator2 ''); capabilities.setCapability (`` app '', APP); driver = new AndroidDriver (new URL (`` http: //localhost:4723/wd/hub ''), capabilities);} @ After public nullity tearDown () {if (driver! = null) {driver.quit ();}} @ Test @ SuppressWarnings (`` unchecked '') public nihility testNotifications () {Mapres = (Map) driver.executeScript (`` mobile: getNotifications ''); List> notifications = (List>) res.get (`` statusBarNotifications ''); for (Mapnotification: presentment) {MapinnerNotification = (Map) notification.get (`` notification ''); if (innerNotification.get (`` bigTitle '')! = null) {System.out.println (innerNotification.get (`` bigTitle ''));} else {System.out.println (innerNotification.get (`` rubric ''));} if (innerNotification.get (`` bigText '')! = null) {System.out.println (innerNotification.get (`` bigText ''));} else {System.out.println (innerNotification.get (`` text ''));}}}}
Author & # x27; s Profile

Jonathan Lipps

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Author & # x27; s Profile

Piali Mazumdar

Lead, Content Marketing, HeadSpin Inc.

Piali is a dynamic and results-driven Content Marketing Specialist with 8+ years of experience in crafting engaging story and marketing collateral across diverse industry. She excels in collaborating with cross-functional teams to develop innovative content strategies and deliver compelling, authentic, and impactful content that resonates with target audiences and enhances brand authenticity.

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Retrieving Status Bar Notifications for Android Devices

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Automate build-over-build regression testing for consistent results
gain better visibility into functional & performance issues
Gain best profile into functional and execution issues
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Reduce meanspirited time to identify/resolve during test, QA, and production
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Accelerate time-to-market, gaining a competitive edge
faster development cycles
Boost developer/QA productiveness with faster development cycles
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Automate build-over-build regression testing for consistent upshot
gain better visibility into functional & performance issues
Gain best visibility into functional and performance issues
reduce mean time
Reduce mean clip to identify/resolve during test, QA, and product
evaluate audio, video & qoe
Evaluate audio, video, and content calibre of experience (QoE) effortlessly
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