Android 12 detail adjustments: notification system count is more prominent

Every major version of Android will optimize the notification system, sometimes adding major new features, and sometimes just making minor adjustments to the layout. In the first developer preview of Android 12, Google made some adjustments to the notification system to make the Notification snoozing feature more accessible. In the third developer preview released recently, the notification stacking layout was adjusted to make the number of notifications more obvious and make better use of space.

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As you can see in the two images below, Android 12 DP3 tweaks Gmail notifications. Before Android 12 DP3, a small counter would appear in the bottom right corner of any notification stack that contained more previews than it could display. With the Android 12 DP3 update, this counter was moved to the top, with an expansion arrow added — it also gained a background-colored bubble.

While this notification change may seem like a very minor tweak, it improves visibility by making the notification count easier to spot. The bright red color seems to have been chosen to match the Gmail icon, but apps with black or dark gray icons may end up with a counter that's closely tied to nearby text.