NotificationCompat

NotificationCompat is a class in the AndroidX Core library (androidx.core.app.NotificationCompat) that provides a backward-compatible API for creating and displaying notifications across Android versions. It acts as a bridge over the platform Notification API, exposing features available on newer releases while handling older devices gracefully.

The primary component is NotificationCompat.Builder, which constructs Notification objects in a version-agnostic way. Typical usage involves setting a small icon, title, text, and a content intent, along with options like auto-cancel and ongoing status. On Android O (API 26) and later, the builder accepts a channelId, and the corresponding NotificationChannel must be created via the system; on older versions the channel concept is ignored thanks to compatibility.

NotificationCompat supports a range of features across versions. It includes support for various notification styles such as BigTextStyle, InboxStyle, MessagingStyle, and MediaStyle. Actions can be added with addAction to provide quick responses or shortcuts. Other common options include progress indicators, grouping, subtext, visibility, priority, defaults, and category.

To display a notification, developers typically pass the built Notification to NotificationManagerCompat.notify, which handles compatibility across platform versions.

NotificationCompat is widely used in Android apps to ensure consistent notification behavior across a broad range of devices, modernizing code with a single API while maintaining support for older Android releases.