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How to use chat bubbles in Android 11

Google's goal with Android 11 was to improve upon a few key aspects of the OS that needed some polish, one of which being notifications. Notifications in prior Android versions have been very good, but in Android 11, we're introduced to a new feature that keeps important chat/messaging notifications on the forefront.

It's called "chat bubbles," and it's basically a copy/paste of Facebook Messenger's "chat head" feature that's been around for a few years. When you get a text, WhatsApp message, or anything else like that, you can now turn that regular notification into a chat bubble that floats on the top of your screen. No matter what you're doing on your phone, chat bubbles ensure you always have easy access to that conversation.

How to enable chat bubbles

First thing's first, you should know how to open a chat bubble in Android 11. Thankfully, doing so couldn't be easier.

• When you get a new text/message, swipe down to view your notifications.
• Tap the circle icon (it's on the bottom-right of the message notification). Source: Android Central

Just like that, your standard notification block is transformed into a chat bubble!

It's important to keep in mind that app developers need to add support for chat bubbles in order for them to work, meaning your favorite messaging app may not be compatible with the feature right away. That said, the goal of chat bubbles is for them to be available for any and all messaging apps you use — including Google Messages, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Telegram, Discord, Slack, etc.

How to use chat bubbles

Now that you have a chat bubble on your screen, it's time to start using it. Your chat bubbles are just quick shortcuts for conversations you're having in your various messaging apps, meaning all of the user interface elements for the chat bubble look just like they would if you opened the full application.

• When a chat bubble is on your screen tap on it to open up the bubble.
• Tap Manage in the lower-left corner to view chat bubble settings
• Tap the + icon to view recent bubbles you've previously used. Source: Android Central

How to get rid of chat bubbles

Chat bubbles are great for ongoing conversations that you want to stay on top of, but once said conversation ends, there's no need to keep that bubble on your screen. Thankfully, removing it is super simple.

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• Hold down on the chat bubble.
• Move it to the X icon at the bottom of your screen.
• Let go to delete it. Source: Android Central

How to change chat bubble settings

Using chat bubbles in the moment is great, and if you dig a little deeper, you'll find additional settings that allow you to fine-tune your experience with them. To do this, we need to journey into our phone's notification settings.

• Open the Settings app on your phone.
• Tap Apps & notifications .
• Tap See all apps .
• Tap the messaging app you want to adjust the settings for. Source: Android Central

• Tap Notifications .
• Tap Bubbles . Source: Android Central

On this page, you have a few different options for how you want that app to interact with chat bubbles. You can configure it so that it doesn't use chat bubbles whatsoever, only allow certain contacts from the app to trigger a chat bubble, or have all conversations be displayed in bubble format.

We recommend going through all of your chat apps and setting things up the way you'd like, that way your chat bubble experience will be as seamless and enjoyable as can be.

How to fix issues with chat bubbles

Chat bubbles are a great new addition to Android 11 — when they work. Some people have been having issues with getting the feature to actually function properly (regardless if they have the best Android phone or not), taking all of the fun out of it. If you're experiencing chat bubble issues, here are a few tips to try and remedy things.

For starters, you'll want to ensure that chat bubbles are actually turned on for the app you're using. Yes, it sounds obvious, but it doesn't hurt to double-check. If the app is set to "Nothing can bubble," you've found the culprit. Similarly, it's possible that the app you're trying to use chat bubbles with simply doesn't support the API yet. If that's the case, it's just a matter of waiting for the developer to implement the feature.

You may also want to try turning your phone off and turning it back on again. This is the go-to solution for so many tech problems, and that's because it works more often than not. Smartphones are complicated little machines, and sometimes, things just goof. Turn your phone off, give it a break for a few minutes, and everything should be back to normal once you reboot.

Get the newest features ASAP Chat bubbles are available as part of Android 11, and unlike many other phones, the Pixel 4a is already rocking it. Having a Pixel means you're first-in-line for new Android updates as soon as they're available, and that's a benefit you get with the Pixel 4a through 2023.

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Joe Maring was a Senior Editor for Android Central between 2017 and 2021. You can reach him on Twitter at @JoeMaring1 .

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How to 'bubble' a Messages conversation on Android (and why you should)

I have certain people (such as my wife) whose messages I need to ensure I never miss. There are many ways of doing this but my go-to is to "bubble" a conversation, which creates a small bubble for the conversation on my phone's home screen. By doing this, I always know when my wife has sent me a message and I can simply tap the bubble to open the conversation. 

I only do this for very important conversations, otherwise, my display would be filled with bubbles and that's not very efficient. Android allows you to bubble all conversations but I wouldn't recommend that as it can get crowded and confusing.

Also: The best Android phones right now: Tested and reviewed

The bubbles feature has been around for some time, so your Android device should have it included with the Messages app. And given Messages is installed by default, you should be ready to go. One thing to keep in mind is that bubbles is separate from Rich Communication Services (RSC), so whether you've enabled that feature will not have any effect on bubbling conversations.

With that said, let's bubble.

How to bubble a Messages conversation

What you'll need: The only things you'll need are an Android device and a Messages conversation to bubble. That's it. Let's make it happen.

1. Open Messages

The first thing to do is open Messages on your Android device. 

2. Open Settings

Tap your profile photo in the upper right corner and, from the resulting popup, tap Messages settings.

3. Enable Bubbles

In the Settings page, tap Bubbles. In the resulting window, tap Selected conversations can bubble (or Selected only if you're on a Samsung device). Once you've done that, back out of Settings.

By default, Messages is set such that nothing can bubble.

4. Bubble a conversation

Here's the trick. You have to wait until a message comes to your device before you can bubble the conversation. When a message does arrive (for a conversation you want to bubble), pull down the Notification Shade and tap History. Locate and long-press the message in question. On the resulting page, tap the On/Off slider for Bubble this conversation.

You must enable Bubbles for each conversation you want.

If you're using a Samsung Galaxy device, you won't find easy access to your notification history. Fortunately, Samsung has made it easy to bubble a conversation, directly from the Notification itself. So, when you see a notification for a Messages conversation, tap the small square with the arrow pointing to the bottom right corner and the conversation will be added as a bubble to your homescreen.

The bubble icon is directly to the left of the bell.

Tap the bubble to view the conversation and respond. Once you're done, you can drag the bubble to the bottom of the display to dismiss it or you can leave it there for easy access. Personally, once I've responded, I drag the bubble off the screen so when it reappears, I know there's a message I need to respond to.

A conversation bubble can be moved to any place at the edge of your display.

Bubbles are a great way to ensure you never miss an important conversation on Android. I highly recommend using this feature, so you can be certain to stay up to date with certain contacts.

Also: How to enable read receipts for texts on Android

One thing to keep in mind, however, is that once you bubble a conversation, it will always appear in a bubble. The only way to stop that behavior is to go into your settings and disable the conversation for bubbling.

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How to Enable Chat Bubbles Feature on Messenger in Android 11

• June 16, 2020

With Android 11 , Google has now rolled out full support for bubble notifications for conversations. If you have a device running the latest public beta, here’s how you can enable and use chat bubbles in Android 11 .

Enable Chat Bubbles (Bubble Notifications) in Android 11

For starters, bubble notifications were first introduced with the Android Q beta phase. However, the option went hidden in developer options by the time of stable release. While it was optional in Android 10, it’s now enabled by default in Android 11.

Chat bubbles are similar to what Facebook has been offering for many years with its Messenger app on Android. Instead of typical notifications, chat conversations are shown as floating avatars on the screen. You can simply drag them around or tap to open the chat screen.

The latest Android focuses a lot on how you interact with people, i.e., your conversations. Being a part of it, Bubbles ensure that you never miss out on a one-on-one conversation amongst other notifications.

Steps to Use Bubble Notifications in Android 11

In Android 11, Google has added a new sub-menu for enabling Bubbles, which can be accessed as follows.

1] On your phone, head to Settings > Apps and Notifications > See all apps.

2] Here, select the app which supports the feature, for example, Messenger.

3] Click on Bubbles under Notifications , and select “ All conversations can bubble. ”

Once enabled, the app notification will have a tiny bubble icon at the bottom right which can be used to toggle floating notifications.

As of first public beta, the feature seems to be working only for Facebook Messenger. According to reports, Google will soon be rolling it out for the Google Messages app. Once it arrives, you’ll be able to enable bubble chats in Messages’ notification settings.

Wrapping Up

The Bubble Chats feature relies on Google’s new Bubbles API. As app developers start implementing it, we’ll see more and more apps supporting it in the coming time, including WhatsApp and Telegram. Anyway, what are your thoughts on it? Let us know in the comments below. Stay tuned to GTU for tips and tricks on Android 11.

Also, read-  Top Android 11 Features: Chat Bubble, Screen Recording & More

Ritik Singh

Ritik is the Managing Editor at GadgetsToUse. He manages the website and oversees the content to ensure it's as informative as possible. He also heads the sub-sites in the network. Putting work aside, he has a great interest in personal finance and is also a keen motorcycle enthusiast.

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How to Use Chat Bubbles on Android

Get access to your most important messages on Android by having them appear in chat bubbles that you can access without leaving your current app.

Chat bubbles on Android are a feature that allows you to keep chat conversations open in floating bubbles on your device's screen. This way, you can stay in touch with other people without the tedious process of constantly switching between apps. Even better, they are less disruptive when compared to traditional notifications.

You can use chat bubbles on various messaging apps like WhatsApp, Google Messages, Slack, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, and more. In this article, we will guide you on how to use chat bubbles on Android 11+ devices. Our guide is based on Android 13.

Enable Chat Bubbles on Android

While most devices will have the chat bubbles feature turned on by default, follow the steps below if this feature is not enabled. Chat bubbles may also be automatically enabled for some apps when you set up priority conversations on Android .

• Open the Settings app on your Android device.
• Tap the Notifications category.
• Next, tap Bubbles under the Conversation category.
• Enable the toggle next to the Allow apps to show bubbles option.

Some of the menus might look different depending on what phone you're using, but the basic instructions will be the same.

Enable or Disable Chat Bubbles for a Specific App

Once you enable the chat bubbles option on Android using the previous step, supported apps are ready to use this feature. However, you can still follow the steps below to decide which apps will have the chat bubbles feature turned on.

• Open the Settings app on your device and tap the Notifications category.
• On the Notifications page, tap App settings under the Manage section.
• Select an app from the App notifications section. You can use the filter option below the category name to show all apps if the one you want is missing from the current list.
• Under the Conversations category, tap Bubbles . Remember, not all Android messaging apps support this feature. If you don't find this option, scroll to the bottom of the page, tap the Additional settings in the app option, and find bubbles settings in the main app settings.
• On the next page, tap your preferred option to enable all or selected conversations to bubble, or turn off chat bubbles for the app using the Nothing can bubble option.

Enable or Disable Chat Bubbles for a Specific Conversation

If you don't want bubbles to appear for every message in an app, follow the steps below to configure the specific conversations you wish to bubble on the screen.

• Ask a person to send you a message on a supported app. In our case here, we will use the Google Messages app.
• Once the message arrives, swipe down from the top of the screen to open the notification shade, then locate and expand the unread message notification. An app that supports chat bubbles will have an icon of a small box with an arrow and a dot in the bottom right corner of the app notification.
• Tap that icon, and a floating chat window will pop open on the screen connected to a bubble or chat head. From here, you can perform all the activities you would normally do on the main app. Remember, you can have multiple conversations in chat bubbles. Tap the icon with a + symbol to view recent and dismissed bubbles.
• Once you are done with the conversation, you can tap the chat head or outside the window to minimize it into a bubble that stays on the edge of the screen. You can tap and drag the chat bubble to any position on the left and right edges of the screen to avoid it getting in the way.

Besides the chat bubbles, here are other things you can do with Google Messages .

How to Dismiss Chat Bubbles From the Screen

You can dismiss chat bubbles temporarily or permanently. When you temporarily dismiss a chat bubble, it will pop open again when you receive a new message. Below is a quick way to temporarily remove a bubble.

• Tap and hold the chat bubble you wish to dismiss.

Here is another way to dismiss a chat bubble temporarily.

• Tap the chat bubble to open its connected conversation window.
• Below the chat window, tap the Manage button and select Dismiss bubble .

On the other hand, when you permanently remove chat bubbles, they will not be displayed again on the screen for that conversation, even when you receive new messages. To achieve this, use the following steps.

• Tap the chat bubble for the conversation you wish to dismiss permanently.
• Tap the Manage button below the conversation window and select Don't bubble conversation . Remember, other allowed conversations in the messaging app will still show chat bubbles.

Enjoy Flexible Notifications on Android

Chat bubbles are a great feature if you are looking for a way to stay connected with people without disrupting what you are currently doing on your Android device. They're easy to activate, use, and a growing list of messaging apps support them. It is time to try chat bubbles and see if they make your life much easier.

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How to Enable Android’s New Chat Bubbles

Smart phone notifications can be overwhelming. They can also be, well, boring, hidden away as little rectangles at the top of your screen and looking mostly the same. If you want to spice up your notifications a little, consider taking advantage of one of Google’s fun alert features: chat bubbles.

How do chat bubbles work on Android?

On Android, bubbles allow you to set chat notifications as little circles that appear on your phone’s screen. They’re small enough to not distract from what you’re up to, but always available if you need to respond to a quick message. You can quickly enter a conversation, which opens a separate window on-screen, and easily dismiss that window back into the bubble so you can keep doing whatever it is you’re doing.

If you haven’t seen these bubbles on your phone yet, that’s because you need to activate them yourself. Fortunately, it’s easy to do so long as you’re running Android 11. To check if you’re running Android 11, head to Settings > About phone > Android version .

How to enable chat bubbles on your Android

To start, make sure the feature is turned on. Head to Settings > Notification > Bubbles , then ensure the toggle next to “ Allow apps to show bubbles ” is enabled.

Open your notifications by swiping down from the top of the display. Locate an unread notification from a messaging app. If it supports bubbles (and not all chat apps do) you’ll see a little box with a dot in the bottom right of the notification window. Tap that icon, and the notification will jump alive, opening the chat window connected to a bubble, or “chat head.”

When you’re done with the chat, just tap outside the window to minimise it back into the bubble. That bubble now lives on your screen, so you can go about your business until you want to jump into the conversation again. You can also view other recent bubbles by tapping the “X” that appears when tapping the active chat bubble on-screen.

How to remove chat bubbles from your screen

There are a few ways to get rid of chat bubbles, some temporary, and some permanent. Let’s start with temporary: Tap and drag and the bubble to the bottom of your screen, where you’ll find a large “X”. Drag the bubble over the “X” and let go to dismiss the bubble.

Alternatively, tap the bubble, then tap “ Manage ” at the bottom of the screen. Now, you can tap “ Dismiss bubble ,” which will remove it from your screen temporarily. The next time you receive a message from that app, however, the bubble will pop back up on your display.

If you want to remove chat bubbles from your display permanently, it’s just as easy. Tap the chat bubble again, tap “ Manage ,” then tap “ Don’t bubble conversation .” This option will not only dismiss the chat bubble, but it will disable chat bubbles for that conversation. That won’t stop other conversations in that app from appearing as bubbles if you’ve selected that, however. To stop an app from appearing as a bubble altogether, you’ll need to go one step further.

How to turn off chat bubbles for an app

Head to Settings > Notifications > App settings , then choose the app in question. If the app supports bubbles, tap “ Bubbles ,” then choose “ Nothing can bubble .” If that option doesn’t appear here, but you know that the app supports bubbles, scroll down and tap “ Additional settings in the app ,” as the option might be in the in-app settings instead.

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Bubbles & Conversations in Android 11: Getting Started

Learn how to use Bubbles in Android to add notifications and create conversational shortcuts for Direct Share. By Jenn Bailey .

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Getting Started

Showing notifications in the conversations section, adding a person to the conversation, understanding fallback behavior, creating conversation shortcuts.

• Dynamically Updating the Shortcuts
• Testing the Shortcuts
• Allowing Direct Sharing Through Shortcuts
• Notification Bubbles
• Adding BubbleMetadata
• Making Your Activities Bubble
• Detecting Bubble User Permissions
• Background Bubbles
• Where to Go From Here?

The most important thing an Android phone does is connect people. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could feel like the people you want to talk to are right there with you?

Android 11 has spectacular new features to help developers and users do just that. These features allow quick access to conversations with conversation shortcuts and adds a new Conversations section in the notification shade. Bubbles also gives you sophisticated sharing and ranking capabilities, as well as improved multitasking.

These changes reflect the goal of the platform: It will continue to evolve to focus on people and conversations as part of a multi-year Android initiative.

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to add these features to an app called Bubble Affirmations , which simulates chats with inspirational characters who provide a quick fix of ongoing encouragement at your fingertips.

In the process, you’ll learn how to:

• Make notifications appear in the Conversations section
• Create conversation shortcuts
• Allow direct share through the shortcuts
• Add metadata to bubbles
• Detect user permission for bubbles

Perhaps you know Android but are unfamiliar with Kotlin. If that’s the case, take a look at Kotlin For Android: An Introduction .

Just in case you’d like a quick primer on notifications, take a peek at Android Notifications Tutorial: Getting Started .

Now, it’s time to dive in!

Download the project materials by using the Download Materials button at the top or bottom of this tutorial. Open the Starter project in Android Studio. After the project finishes loading, build and run.

This notification could be more inspiring. In the next step, you’ll promote it to the Conversations section of the drawer.

Many phones have a reserved section at the top of the notification shade for real-time conversations. Notifications that appear in this section have a stronger visual emphasis on the avatar, highlighting who the conversation is with. Long-pressing notifications in this area shows you conversation-specific actions you can take.

To appear in this section, the notification must use MessagingStyle and associate the message with a Person . You’ll see how to do this next.

Open NotificationHelper.kt and add the method below inside NotificationHelper :

This code generates a person to associate with the notification, making it a Person Notification .

Now, in showNotification , add the following above the line of code that creates the notification:

The code above creates the person . Now, update the line of code that creates the notification to:

This passes the person to createNotification .

Then, replace createNotification with:

createNotification configures and returns Notification.Builder to send the notification. Here’s what’s going on inside:

• First, you set the title and icon for the notification.
• Then you use setShortcutId or setShortcutInfo to associate the notification with a long-lived dynamic or cached sharing shortcut when targeting Android 11. You also set the LocusId to improve ranking accuracy.
• In Android 11, a conversation notification must use MessagingStyle .
• Finally, you include the time of the notification and set an intent to open when the user taps the notification.

For better ranking, a messaging app can include a URI to a contact.

If you want a conversation to appear in the Conversations section in Android 11, you must associate it with a valid, long-lived, dynamic or cached sharing shortcut and use MessagingStyle . The user can demote the conversation by altering the notification channel settings.

Apps that target Android 10 can make messages appear in the notification space, but the requirements are different. If the app uses MessagingStyle , it isn’t necessary to provide a shortcut in Android 10. However, if you don’t provide a shortcut, users won’t be able to see conversation-specific functions inline by long-pressing the notification.

If you set the category to CATEGORY_MESSAGE and the platform recognizes the app as a messaging app, it will still show in the Conversations section, but it will be in the pre-Android 11 style with no conversation-specific functions.

Now that you’ve associated the notification with a person , build and run:

The notification looks better now, and the sender’s avatar is more visible. For the notification to show up in the conversation area, however, you have to associate it with a valid shortcut. You’ll create the shortcuts next.

When targeting Android 11 or higher, you have to give a shortcut to any notification you want to show in the conversation space. Shortcuts are a handy way for a user to jump right into a conversation. Be sure to use AdaptiveIconDrawable for your shortcut icons. Otherwise, the avatar might not look as intended.

Add the following function inside NotificationHelper.kt :

This code provides an adaptive bitmap so you can add the shortcuts. To do this, first add a new Android resource file to res called shortcuts.xml . Type shortcuts as the root element and select XML as the resource type and xml as the directory name.

In shortcuts.xml , inside the shortcut tag, add the following code:

The share-target element holds information about which class will handle the intent, the type of data it can accept from sharing and the category that the direct share target uses.

Next, open AndroidManifest.xml and add the following code above the closing activity tag for MainActivity :

The code above associates MainActivity with the dynamic shortcut’s share-target in shortcuts.xml .

Next, open NotificationHelper.kt and add the following inside NotificationHelper :

createDynamicShortcutIntent creates the intent to launch from this shortcut. It uses a URI that passes categoryId to link directly to a specific conversation in the app via the shortcut.

Still in NotificationHelper.kt , add:

Here’s what the code above does:

• LocusId helps the system accurately rank the conversation based on app usage.
• Conversation shortcuts must be long-lived. If the conversation no longer exists, the app can delete the shortcut with removeLongLivedShortcuts . Don’t remove shortcuts unless absolutely necessary — for example, when the user blocks a contact.
• Sets the category to the share-target defined in shortcuts.xml . Categories describe what type of data the user can share to the shortcut.
• Creates a person with an avatar and associates the person with the shortcut. Conversational shortcuts always have an associated person object.

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Use bubbles to let users participate in conversations

Bubbles make it easier for users to see and participate in conversations.

Bubbles are built into the notification system. They float on top of other app content and follow the user wherever they go. Users can expand bubbles to reveal app functionality and information, and they can collapse them when they're not using them.

When the device is locked, or the always-on-display is active, bubbles appear as notifications normally do.

Bubbles are an opt-out feature. When an app presents its first bubble, a permission dialog offers two choices:

• Block all bubbles from your app. Notifications aren't blocked, but they never appear as bubbles.
• Allow all bubbles from your app. All notifications sent with BubbleMetaData appear as bubbles.

The bubble API

Bubbles are created via the notification API, so send your notification as normal. If you want your notification to display as a bubble, attach extra data to it.

The expanded view of a bubble is created from an activity that you choose. Configure the activity to display properly as a bubble. The activity must be resizeable and embedded . If it lacks either of these requirements, it displays as a notification instead.

The following code demonstrates how to implement a simple bubble:

If your app shows multiple bubbles of the same type, like multiple chat conversations with different contacts, the activity must be able to launch multiple instances. On devices running Android 10 and lower, notifications aren't shown as bubbles unless you explicitly set documentLaunchMode to "always" . Beginning with Android 11, you don't need to explicitly set this value, as the system automatically sets all conversations' documentLaunchMode to "always" .

To send a bubble, follow these steps:

• Create a notification as you normally do.
• Call BubbleMetadata.Builder(PendingIntent, Icon) or BubbleMetadata.Builder(String) to create a BubbleMetadata object.
• Use setBubbleMetadata() to add the metadata to the notification.
• If targeting Android 11 or higher, make sure the bubble metadata or notification references a sharing shortcut.

These steps are shown in the following example:

If your app is in the foreground when a bubble is sent, importance is ignored and your bubble is always shown, unless the user blocks bubbles or notifications from your app.

Create an expanded bubble

You can configure your bubble to present it in expanded state automatically. We recommend only using this functionality if the user performs an action that results in a bubble, like tapping a button to start a new chat. In this case, it also makes sense to suppress the initial notification sent when a bubble is created.

There are methods you can use to set flags that enable these behaviors: setAutoExpandBubble() and setSuppressNotification() .

The following example shows how to configure a bubble to automatically present in an expanded state:

Bubble content lifecycle

When a bubble is expanded, the content activity goes through the normal process lifecycle , resulting in the application becoming a foreground process, if it isn't already.

When the bubble is collapsed or dismissed, the activity is destroyed. This might result in the process being cached and later killed, depending on whether the app has other foreground components running.

When bubbles appear

To reduce interruptions for the user, bubbles only appear under certain circumstances.

If an app targets Android 11 or higher, a notification doesn't appear as a bubble unless it meets the conversation requirements . If an app targets Android 10 or lower, the notification appears as a bubble only if one or more of the following conditions are met:

• The notification uses MessagingStyle and has a Person added.
• The notification is from a call to Service.startForeground , has a category of CATEGORY_CALL , and has a Person added.
• The app is in the foreground when the notification is sent.

If none of these conditions are met, the notification is shown instead of a bubble.

Best practices

• Send a notification as a bubble only if it is important, such as when it is part of an ongoing communication or if the user explicitly requests a bubble for content. Bubbles use screen real estate and cover other app content.
• Make sure your bubble notification also works as a normal notification. When the user disables the bubble, a bubble notification is shown as a normal notification.
• Keep functionality as specific and lightweight as possible. Processes that launch from a bubble, such as activities and dialogs, appear within the bubble container. This means a bubble can have a task stack. Things can get complicated if there is a lot of functionality or navigation within your bubble.
• Call super.onBackPressed when overriding onBackPressed in the bubble activity. Otherwise, your bubble might not behave correctly.

When a collapsed bubble receives an updated message, the bubble shows a badge icon to indicate an unread message. When the user opens the message in the associated app, follow these steps:

• Update the BubbleMetadata to suppress the notification. Call BubbleMetadata.Builder.setSuppressNotification() . This removes the badge icon to indicate that the user interacted with the message.
• Set Notification.Builder.setOnlyAlertOnce() to true to suppress the sound or vibration that accompanies the BubbleMetadata update.

The People sample app is a simple conversation app that uses bubbles. For demonstration purposes, this app uses chatbots. In real-world applications, bubbles must only be used for messages by humans, not by bots.

Content and code samples on this page are subject to the licenses described in the Content License . Java and OpenJDK are trademarks or registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates.

Last updated 2024-04-01 UTC.

TechRepublic

How to enable the Bubbles feature on the Messages app in Android 11

Length: 01:04 | September 10, 2020

Jack Wallen shows you how to enable and use the Bubbles feature for messaging in Android 11.

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How to Get Android 11 Chat Bubbles on Any Phones

Google recently introduced ‘Bubble’ in Android 11. It works similarly to Facebook Messenger Chat heads, i.e. it shows your text conversation in a little bubble that floats over your other apps. But as expected, the latest version of Android is not available for every smartphone. So, meanwhile, you can take the help of third-party apps to get chat bubbles for every chat app just like on Android 11. Here are the apps that can help you to do that.

Also Read:  Best Prank Apps for Android (2020)

Android 11 Chat Bubbles on unsupported phones

1. direct chat.

Direct Chat is the closest replica for Android 11’s chat bubbles. Unlike all the other apps in this list, Direct Chat has the most customization options, such as dark mode, customizing bubble look, remembering the last position of the bubble, etc, and also provides a lot of settings specific to an app. For example, on WhatsApp, you have the option to only bubble personal chats but not group chats, etc.

Anyhow, this app cannot display messages you received before installing the app. It also bubbles all the notifications including notifications like “Checking for new messages”, “Backing up your messages” etc. Anyhow, Direct Chat has a subscription plan of $4.99/3months instead of a one-time payment

• Cleanest and responsive bubbles
• Blocks chat notifications, so you won’t get notified in 2 ways at the same time.
• Doesn’t notify you when you are using the same app
• Cannot display previous messages before you install the app
• Bubbles all the notifications from chat apps
• Subscription plan

Download Direct Chat

Flychat is similar to Direct Chat in many ways including the, but the chat bubble doesn’t support features like adding images, location, etc. This also gives you a separate chat bubble for each conversation sometimes. Apart from that, Flychat also supports customization and it also bubbles only messages instead of all notifications. Comparing to Direct Chat, Flychat has the best advantage when it comes to pricing as it is a single time payment of $2.49.

• Bubbles only chat messages instead of all notifications.
• Doesn’t notify you when you are using the same app.
• One-time payment for all premium features
• Gives you a separate chat bubble for every conversation making the screen cluttered with chat bubbles
• Doesn’t support additional features add images, location, making calls, etc. You need to open the respected app for it.
• Cannot add applications on our own.

Download Flychat

Wrapping up

There are many other chat bubble apps like bubble notifications, bubble chat heads, etc. They may serve the same purpose but looks and feels completely different from what Google is offering with Android 11. Anyhow, comparing all the apps, Direct Chat is obviously better but if you are looking for cheap ads-free service, I definitely recommend Flychat.

Also read:  How to Change Fonts in WhatsApp Chats

Ravi Teja KNTS

Tech Enthusiast & Cinephile by Nature | Writing about technology for 3+ years on TechWiser| Currently interested in AI, PWAs, Cloud, Ecosystems & Esthetics. But I keep changing my mind faster than Google's Messaging apps.

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Building Android Conversation Bubbles

We recently rolled out support for Conversation Bubbles for DMs and Group DMs on Android 11.

In case you’re not familiar with Conversation Bubbles, take a look at the video below. Basically, they are a way to pop out a conversation from a notification into a Bubble that will draw over other apps, making multitasking while chatting easy and comfortable.

This post will describe how we built support for these bubbles, the challenges we faced along the way, and how we overcame them. Some details were simplified where it made sense to, but stayed relatively close to our actual implementation overall.

Prerequisites

According to the official Android documentation , there are three basic requirements for supporting Bubbles from a notification:

• The notification needs to be built using MessagingStyle , the native Android API for messaging notifications.
• The notification needs to have an associated Sharing Shortcut .
• There needs to be a BubbleMetadata object set on the notification, pointing to a resizable, embedded Activity.

MessagingStyle

MessagingStyle was introduced in Android 7 and gives developers a way of building notifications for messaging apps using structured data. This was a huge step forward from the previous approach where developers had to style their own messaging notifications using spans and string concatenation. Luckily, we had recently rewritten our notification code and migrated it to MessagingStyle .

Sharing Shortcuts

After we had MessagingStyle in place, the next step was to add support for Sharing Shortcuts. Supporting this feature was a high priority for our Notification team because they are not just a requirement for Bubbles, but also for Notifications showing up in the Conversations space of the notification shade.

Our basic flow is to create a sharing shortcut for every notification pushed and every conversation opened in the app. However, there’s some tricky details that warrant further discussion:

Shortcuts in Android come with icons, which are displayed in three main places: On top of a notification, in the launcher when long-pressing the app icon, and in the sharing sheet. Ideally, those icons should clearly represent the conversation at hand.

For Direct Messages, finding the right icon was trivial — we just use the user’s avatar! For Group DMs, however, it was a bit trickier. We decided to go with what seems to have established itself as a bit of a platform convention: Two circular avatars on a white background.

To achieve this icon, we fetch avatars from two users in the conversation and then draw them on a bitmap canvas. We then save that bitmap as a png in our app’s cache so we can access it next time we need to create a shortcut for that conversation.

Asynchronous icon updates

Since we are creating these shortcuts from our notification codepath, execution time is a major concern. Not only do we want to minimize latency so our users will get messages as quickly as possible, but we also only have limited time to process the push before Android’s Background Execution Limits kick in.

To solve for this, we don’t set Sharing Shortcut icons from the notification code path unless we have them cached already. Instead, we create a Sharing Shortcut with a placeholder icon and then create a JobScheduler job to asynchronously download the avatars, create the shortcut icon, and update the shortcut with the new icon.

Different Activities for the same Shortcut

Officially, the Shortcut API only supports setting one Activity as a Shortcut’s target, which was an issue for us as we have three different UIs that we want to display based on how the Shortcut was launched:

• Compose for when the user uses the Android share sheet to share a file or some text into Slack
• Messages to display a conversation when the user opens a shortcut from the launcher by long-pressing the app icon.
• Bubbles for when the user presses the “Bubble” icon on a notification.

To achieve this, we had to resort to a Trampoline Activity : The activity we set as the target for the shortcut only has one job: Determine which of these three cases is happening, and then open the corresponding UI before closing itself.

To determine whether the user is sharing into Slack is simple: we can just check if intent.action is either SEND or SEND_MULTIPLE .

Determining if we’re launching into a Bubble is a bit trickier: Android 11 does not provide an official way to tell your shortcut is being opened by a Bubble.

However, we found a solution to this issue that, while hacky, works really well! Digging through the Android source code for Bubble implementation details we might be able to use, we found that they are implemented by rendering on a virtual display, with the hardcoded name prefix of TaskVirtualDisplay .  This was all we needed to write some code that tells us whether or not we’re opening into a Bubble:

Starting with Android 12, our friends at Google added a new API that we can use instead!

Now that we have all the prerequisites out of the way, we can finally look at implementing the Bubble itself.

Once you have a share shortcut and your notifications are using MessagingStyle , adding basic Bubbles support is pretty straightforward.

All you need to do is set BubbleMetadata on your notification to let Android know it can render the notification as Bubble:

That’s it! Well, kind of. Despite having a basic Bubble working now, there were still quite a few steps we had to take until this was a finished feature:

Making sure the Bubble displays the right content

What we display in a Bubble is basically the same thing we display when you view a conversation in the main app. However, there is one key difference: In the main app, the user can freely navigate wherever they want.

This behavior was not desirable for the bubble, which is a representation of one specific conversation. Imagine how confusing the experience would be if we let you navigate freely and you ended up in a state where the Bubble with one coworker’s avatar on it actually contained your conversation with another coworker!

To prevent this from happening, we did two things:

• The easiest thing to do in most cases was to just disable navigation in the Bubble wherever we could. Since Bubbles are lightweight representations of a conversation, we simply disabled a lot of click listeners that would let the user navigate to other parts of the app.
• However, there’s some flows that we still wanted to support from within the Bubble, such as sharing a message. To support these while making sure the Bubble doesn’t get stuck in a broken state, we decided to open those flows outside the Bubble, in the main app. New intents opened from a Bubble open in the Bubble by default. However, we found out that an Intent with Flag.ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK set opens outside the Bubble.

With these two measures in place, we can ensure a Bubble always displays the conversation it is linked to.

Bubbles and dismissing notifications

Since nobody wants to see their notification drawer full of notifications for Slack messages they’ve already read, we built a mechanism to cancel notifications as soon as their corresponding messages are read on any device.

Unfortunately, there is an implicit behavior with Bubbles and notifications we didn’t know about until we actually built this: If you cancel a notification with an associated Bubble, the Bubble will be dismissed, too!

This resulted in a somewhat amusing bug until we figured out what was going on: The user would open the bubble for a conversation, that channel would be marked as read because we rendered it in the Bubble and then our notification clearing mechanism would kick in and immediately cancel the notification and the Bubble with it.

Thankfully, this was pretty easy to fix: We just check if there is an active Bubble associated with a notification before cancelling it.

The Slack web socket and Bubbles

Once we finally had Bubbles rendering, we had to make sure they worked properly with all our messaging infrastructure.

The Slack app uses a websocket for two-way communication with our backend. A websocket connection is associated with one specific workspace (referred to as team in our codebase) and only sends and receives data related to its workspace.

To support team switching, and to make sure we’re always connected to the right socket, we have a class called ActiveTeamDetector , which is implemented as simple ActivityLifeCycleCallbacks .

Activities implement a simple interface to communicate which team they’re associated with:

ActiveTeamDetector then takes that info and makes it available to other parts of our infra, including our socket connection manager:

This all worked great… until we implemented Bubbles. Bubbles completely broke this model as you could have a Bubble for Team A rendering over the main app displaying Team B.

If you collapsed the Bubble, we would effectively be displaying Team B, but without a new onResume getting called to keep our ActiveTeamDetector up-to-date. We’d be showing Team B while the socket was connected to Team A and all sorts of bad things would happen.

Initially we thought we might have to overhaul our entire messaging infrastructure to support multiple simultaneous socket connections, which would have been a giant addition to the scope.

Thankfully, we found a simpler, if slightly less elegant solution: Because you can’t use the main app while the Bubble is drawing over it anyways, we figured we could get away without actually supporting multiple socket connections as long as we fix the scenario described above where collapsing a Bubble would lead to the main app entering a broken state.

To do so, we had the following idea: While we won’t get a new onResume event from the main app if the Bubble that’s drawing over it gets collapsed, we will get an onPause from the Bubble itself.

With that in mind, we could just store the value of ActiveTeamDetector before the Bubble was opened and then re-emit that once the Bubble is paused, thus resetting the active team to whatever it was before the Bubble was opened.

This simple addition to ActiveTeamEmitter did the trick:

Android 11 Work Profiles and Bubbles

This was it, we thought. Bubbles were finally working perfectly on our emulators and we couldn’t wait to start using them ourselves and start sharing what we’ve built with our coworkers that are dogfooding the app.

So we installed the latest Build on our work phones, flipped the feature flag, clicked the Bubble icon on a notification aaaand… nothing happened.

We double and triple checked the feature flag, our code, and everything else we could think of. This was working perfectly on our emulators — why wasn’t it working on our phones? What’s the difference?

After a lot of sleuthing, we figured it out: The Slack app on our phones was running in an Android Work Profile , as mandated by our IT policy. Our emulators weren’t. So we did some more digging and discovered a bug in Android 11 that meant Bubbles did not work on Work Profiles. It wasn’t just that the Bubbles icon wouldn’t show up either, it was even worse: the icon would show up, but clicking it wouldn’t do anything.

Unfortunately, this meant that we wouldn’t be able to ship Bubbles to Android 11 users on Work Profiles. For a while, we were concerned it might mean we wouldn’t be able to ship on Android 11 at all as we didn’t know of a good way to programmatically check if we were running in a Work Profile and we figured we might have a fair number of users in Work Profiles, seeing how we’re a workspace productivity app.

Thankfully, Android 11 also finally added an easy way to figure out the answer to those questions: UserManager.isManagedProfile() . With this method, we could easily check whether we were in a Work Profile and use that to gate functionality on Android 11. We could also use it to collect some stats on Work Profile usage – turns out only around 5% of our Android 11 users are using Slack in a Work Profile.

With that last hurdle out of the way, we were finally ready to launch Bubbles!

We recently verified this bug has been fixed in the Android 12 Developer Preview – so our Android 12 users will be able to enjoy Bubbles even in Work Profiles!

If you like working on stuff like this, we’re hiring !

How To : Enable Popup Notification Bubbles for Your Chats in Android 11

Android 10 added the framework for OS-wide chat bubbles, a feature popularized by Facebook Messenger. The new system allows you to interact with incoming messages as if you were in the app — all without having to leave your current app. In Android 11, this feature is finally activated.

Whereas in Android 10, only a few apps supported these features (basically Android Messages and few others), in Android 11, all messaging apps support Bubbles. You need only to turn it on first. Currently, this feature recently stopped working in DP4. However, we are confident it will return in the Beta and final version.

Enabling Notification Bubbles

When a notification arrives from any app in the Conversations section of your pull-down shade, swipe it to the left or right just a little bit. This will reveal a couple of buttons — tap the settings cog here. Now, choose "Priority." Once enabled, all future alerts will arrive as both a bubble and on the top of the Conversations section in the notification shade.

The first time you change a conversation to Priority, a prompt will appear informing you of the additional benefits, including appearing on the top of the Conversations section, showing the profile picture on the lock screen, and switching the conversation to a bubble. Select "Got it" in the bottom-right corner to reveal the bubble.

The icon will be overlaid on top of any app you open. The first time you create a bubble, another prompt appears titled "Chat using bubbles." Here, it describes what bubbles are and what they can do. Tap on the icon to see your conversations, as well as another prompt informing you that you can turn off this feature using "Manage."

Interacting with Notification Bubbles

While the bubble icon is active, any new messages from the same conversation will appear as a popup from the chat bubble. You will still receive a notification in the notification shade.

If you turn on Bubbles in multiple apps, only the icon of the most recent message will appear on your screen. However, when you select the bubble, it will show each conversation, where you can switch to using its corresponding icon. This is also true for different conversations within the same app, which will have their own icon.

You can drag the bubble to any location on the edge of your screen. To get rid of the chat bubble, simply drag the icon to the small "x" along the bottom of your display.

Managing Bubbles

You can manage Conversations in a number of ways. First, there is the new "Conversations" menu which disables all Priority conversations. You can find in Settings –> App & notifications –> Conversations .

Select a conversation to configure it, including disabling Priority status or disabling bubbles. Choose "All Bubble settings" to change which conversation can be shown as a bubble, only specific ones or all conversations within an app.

You can also change these settings by opening the app's App info page and choosing "Notifications." Select the specific conversation to manage its settings or choose "Bubbles" to configure whether all or some conversations will appear as bubbles from the same app.

There is also a Bubble menu found in Settings –> Apps & notifications –> Notifications –> Bubbles with one option to enable or disable bubbles for any app. If you never want to use bubbles for any conversation, disable this toggle.

Finally, the fastest way to turn off bubbles is to use the new icon in the bottom-right corner of the conversation's notification.

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• 19 Harry Potter Spells Your Android Phone Can Cast Using Google Assistant

Android is getting worse and worse with every upgrade , so now I have to go through multiple steps to enable something that just used to work without me having to do anything at all. Thanks Android/Google

P.S. If it ain't broke don't fix it and is it too much to ask to just leave things alone?

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• All Features
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• Google Play Books
• Read books on your devices

Read comics with Bubble Zoom on Google Play Books

Due to payment system disruption, Google Play has paused paid services in Russia as of March 10, 2022. Your experience on the Play Store may change. Learn more here .

To read comics easier, you can make speech bubbles bigger and expand your comic to fill the whole screen. Bubble Zoom is available for Marvel and DC collected volumes in English and some popular comics in Japanese.

Important: Bubble Zoom is not available on computer.

Watch this video to see how Bubble Zoom works .

Find out if a comic book has Bubble Zoom

• Search for a comic.
• Tap the comic.

Turn Bubble Zoom on or off

• Open a comic that uses Bubble Zoom.
• Tap the center of the page.

Zoom in & move through speech bubbles

To move through speech bubbles, make sure you're in full-screen mode.

• Make a text bubble bigger: Double tap a speech bubble.

Stop using the volume button to move through speech bubbles

• Select Never, and don't zoom in on speech bubbles.

Fix problems with Bubble Zoom

• Tap the comic to enter the detail page.
• Find the banner: "Part of the Bubble Zoom tech preview."

If Bubble Zoom is available but isn't working, try the steps to fix book loading issues . If that doesn't work, go to step 2.

• On your Android phone or tablet, go to a page with speech bubbles on it.
• If a bubble gets bigger, the feature is working.
• If it doesn't get bigger, go to step 3.
• On your Android phone or tablet, open the comic that uses Bubble Zoom.
• On your Android phone or tablet, open the comic where Bubble Zoom isn't working.
• If it’s not working on a specific page, go to that page.

Need more help?

Try these next steps:.

How-To Geek

How to disable notification bubbles on android.

Don't like Android's new notification Bubbles feature? Here's how to disable it!

Quick Links

Disable bubbles for specific apps, disable bubbles for specific conversations, disable bubbles entirely.

The notification "Bubble" is a feature introduced in Android 11 that works like Facebook Messenger's " Chat Heads ." Conversations can be popped-out into windows that overlay your current activity. If you don't want to use Bubbles, it can be disabled.

Bubbles are an opt-out feature, meaning they're enabled by default. When an app presents a Bubble for the first time, you'll have the option to turn off Bubbles for that specific app. If you'd like, it's also possible to turn off Bubbles for all apps entirely.

On your Android phone or tablet, swipe down from the top of the screen (once or twice depending on your device's manufacturer), and then tap the Gear icon to open the "Settings" menu.

Scroll down and select "Apps and Notifications."

At the top of the screen, select "See all (X) Apps," where "X" is the number of apps you have.

Tap the app you don't want to use Bubbles.

Select "Notifications."

Finally, tap "Bubbles."

Switch the setting to "Nothing Can Bubble."

Now, whenever you receive a new message in that app, you'll no longer see a Bubble.

When an app supports Bubbles, you'll see a little icon in the bottom-right corner of the notification. Tap it to move the conversation to a floating window.

Tap "Manage" under the pop-up window.

This opens a context menu of options for the app. Tap "Don't Bubble Conversation" to disable Bubbles for this specific conversation.

If you'd rather disable the notification Bubbles for all apps, you can do that, too! On your Android phone or tablet, swipe down from the top of the screen (once or twice depending on your device), and then tap the Gear icon to open the "Settings" menu.

Select "Apps and Notifications."

Next, tap "Notifications."

In the top section, tap "Bubbles."

Toggle-Off the switch for "Allow Apps to Show Bubbles."

Now, no apps will be able to use Bubbles. You can return to this screen any time to re-enable the Bubbles feature.

Chat your way safely and smartly.

With Google Messages, you can customize your experience, ensure private conversations, and enjoy the latest AI features.

Express yourself in every chat.

Ditch the default, and choose your colors..

Customize your experience with different colors, emojis and themes, and add extra effects to every conversation.

Snap and share your own customized emoji.

Quickly and easily turn your favorite images into emoji you can share within your chats.

Everything you need. Built right in.

Privacy & security

Save your chats from spammers.

Keep your messages secure with high-quality privacy controls, spam protection, and RCS- enabled data encryption.

AI integration

What you want to say, powered by Google AI.

Turn your fave photos into reactions, set the vibe of your chats, try out the latest Google AI, and more.

Connectivity

Keep the conversation going across your devices.

Switch from your phone to your tablet to your smart watch during the same conversation without any interruption.

Customization

Text it like you talk it.

Message with your own personality and voice by creating emojis, picking chat colors, and making animated effects pop.

Text smarter, not harder.

Get suggested replies, helpful reminders and nudges, and enjoy automatic noise cancellation.

Try Google Messages. Keep what matters.

Keep your data, contacts and chats, and enjoy seamless texting with friends and family, regardless of their device.

Get the answers you need.

How do i download google messages.

Android users: To download Google Messages, simply go to the Google Play Store.

What is RCS?

RCS stands for "Rich Communication Services" and is the modern messaging technology standard. RCS offers an upgraded messaging experience by adding features like high-quality photos and videos, typing indicators, and read receipts. RCS capabilities go beyond traditional SMS (Short Message Service).

How can I sign up for beta testing?

To sign up for beta testing, you must first have Google Messages installed. Once that has been completed, go to the Google Messages page of the Google Play Store, and select "Join" or "Become a beta tester" at the bottom of the page.

*Please note that beta testing availability may vary based on your region.

Does Google Messages support end-to-end encryption?

For conversations between Google Messages users, end-to-end encryption is now enabled on your Android phone by default.

More questions? Check our Help Center.

More about Google Messages.

• Google Messages for Android
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• Google Blog

React BIGGER.

Bring your messages to life with vibrant animations that will transform your words into dazzling visual displays.

Currently in beta. Only on Android.

It’s no longer about blue vs green..

Customize the color of the text bubble and background for every chat and give each conversation its own unique look.

Reactions all your own.

Infuse each message with a burst of visual effects, including animated emojis that appear around the bubbles.

Only on Android.

Bring your voice texts to life..

When sending a voice text, you can also choose a visual effect to express your mood.

React in whole new ways.

Create a new reaction right within the chat window. Just pick an image from your camera roll.

From camera roll to custom emoji.

Just like magic, the subject of the picture is highlighted and automatically turned into a reaction.

Every chat deserves a custom reaction.

Make all of your chats even more you by creating as many personalized reactions as you want.

Bounce the bots.

Google Messages automatically filters out spam and phishing messages, so you never even have to see them.

Enjoy your privacy.

With RCS enabled, your chats are protected by end-to-end encryption. So you can share whatever you need to.

The perfect text, every time.

Choosing from a range of styles, let Magic Compose turn your text into something totally fun and unexpected.

Turn pics into perfect reactions.

Chat across multiple devices..

Never miss a conversation with seamless integration across all your Android devices.

React dynamically.

Infuse each message with a burst of visual effects, including animated emoji that work across devices and OS.

Get the most out of your video calls

When texting isn’t enough and things go from “ok” to “OMG.” you can download Google Meet for all of your video call needs.

More you in every chat.

Customize the backgrounds and bubbles of your conversations, and give each contact a different theme.

Add gestures to every conversation.

React with a simple 👍, and watch as magic unfolds with an animated trio of hands dancing around the message.

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We’d like to ask you a few questions about your experience to help us improve our website. It should take about a minute.

Question of

• Learn about Android Safety
• Learn how to switch to Android
• Get help finding a new smartphone
• Get help finding a new tablet
• Learn about a new Operating System release
• Learn about Google Apps and Android features
• Get help with using Android
• Learn about multi-device experiences
• Initial gathering of information about what smartphones are available
• Narrowing down to a short list of smartphones
• Decided on the smartphone and ready to purchase
• Not currently shopping for a new smartphone
• Extremely safe and secure
• Very safe and secure
• Somewhat safe and secure
• Not so safe and secure
• Not at all safe and secure
• Extremely easy
• Somewhat easy
• Neither easy nor hard
• Somewhat hard
• Extremely hard
• Very Satisfied
• Somewhat Satisfied
• Somewhat Dissatisfied
• Very Dissatisfied
• Very Significantly
• Significantly
• A little bit
• Strongly agree
• Somewhat agree
• Neither agree nor disagree
• Somewhat disagree
• Strongly disagree

We'd like to ask you a few questions about your experience to help us improve our website. It should take about a minute.

• Learn how to switch to a new Android device
• Learn how to keep your Android device safe
• Get help finding a new smartphone or tablet
• Learn about new Android operating system / features
• Explore devices compatible with Android
• Google apps and features
• How to transfer data and apps to an Android device
• Product information for Android devices
• Finding the right Android device for me
• Google apps and features recommended for me
• Learn about Android ecosystem of devices
• Android device safety, data protection and privacy features
• Learn about Android accessibility features