Snowball introduces an interactive, card-based notification centre

As our phones get cluttered with more and more apps, notifications can start to become overwhelming. You don’t want to miss anything important, but you would rather not be distracted by something useless either. Neither iOS nor Android have quite solved that problem yet, leaving it wide open for third parties to have a crack at it.

One company that BetaKit profiled earlier this year is hoping it can turn Android notifications from a chore into a delight. Snowball is a startup in San Francisco that makes a unique app that aims to make notifications smarter, giving you more power and control to decide what needs your attention on your phone at a given time. The app has been available for most of this year, but the newest version of the app promises to make the notification centre on your Android phone even more powerful.

With the new app, you can see Maps directions and ride sharing info for Uber and Lyft, all within something as simple as a calendar notification. When you’re alerted a new video has been published on YouTube, you are able to play the video directly from a card in your notifications, without going to the app. Of course, the app will now be even better at sorting your notifications so that what is most important to you is at the top.

Of course, the best part about Snowball is that this isn’t a “hack”, they have gotten the go-ahead from Google to take over your notifications, so you don’t have to worry about the app being removed from the store over concerns from Google Play powers. You can find and install the app from Google Play today, right here.

[source]TechCrunch[/source]