If Your Galaxy Notifications Are Messed Up, Here's the Fix
Samsung broke notification categories, but not completely.
If the notifications on your Galaxy smartphone are all messed up, you're not alone. As reported by Android Police, Samsung's latest One UI 6.1 update has inadvertently affected notification categories on some users' Galaxy devices, throwing their carefully curated alert settings out the window. Luckily, there's a fix.
Notification categories, or notification channels as Google calls them, is a feature that allows you to enable or disable specific types of notifications on an app-by-app basis. For example, you may choose to enable DM notifications from an app, but disable all other types of alerts, including promotions, friend requests, breaking news, etc.
If you have a ton of apps on your smartphone that you've manually adjusted notification categories for, you don't want that work to go away overnight. Unfortunately, that's what happened for some users with the One UI 6.1 update: In addition to adding new AI features like Circle to Search and Live Translate, this new version of One UI adds a new Manage notification categories for each app setting, which allows you to toggle the feature on and off on your Galaxy. That's fine in theory—more choice is usually a good thing—but Samsung apparently decided to turn this feature off by default in the latest update.
As such, users found their notification categories settings removed following the update, meaning all of those notification types they didn't want to see began delivering away. (Hello, friend requests. Goodbye, sanity.)
Luckily, there's an easy fix for the problem: toggle the feature on instead. One UI 6.1 reportedly remembers your notification categories settings even when you disable the feature, so you can always return to the way you had these option set if you turn the feature back on. So, even though the option is disabled by default, a simple flip of the switch is all it takes to bring it back online.
How to bring back notification categories on One UI 6.1
To find the option, head to Settings > Notifications > Advanced settings. Scroll down, and you'll find Manage notification categories for each app. Toggle it on, and your previous notification category settings should be restored.
Looking for a Galaxy that can run One UI 6.1? Here's the full list of Galaxy smartphones compatible with the latest update: