Android Cowboy

How to enable priority interruptions in Android Lollipop

One of the many new features in Android Lollipop is priority interruptions. Not all notifications are create equal. If I’m in a meeting I don’t want to be disturbed unless it’s someone important, or my mum. Priority interruptions are were you need to turn. You can disable message alerts and incoming calls from everyone except your starred contacts.

This kind of functionality has been around in a wide range of applications for a while but it’s now baked in to Android.

Enable priority interruptions

  1. You can enable priority interruptions by adjusting the volume on your device.
  2. The pop up volume slider will have some new options underneath it. Tap priority to enable priority interruptions.
  3. You can also set the duration. If it’s just short term then you can tap “For one hour” and adjust the time using the -/+ buttons.

 

Interruptions settings

There’s a wealth of settings to play with for interruptions within Android.

To set a time schedule for priority interruptions to automatically kick in pop in to Settings then “Sound and notifications” and tap on Interruptions. From here you can choose whether to set events, calls and messages as priorities. You can also tap “Calls/messages from” to specify whether calls and messages from starred contacts are always treated as priorities.

 

 

Priority app notifications

You can also set apps as priority apps, so that any notifications raised by that app interrupts you. Pop to Settings and then in to “Sound and Notifications” and go to “App notifications”. Here you can tap an app and within it’s setting change the Priority mode. In this way you can always get your Candy Crush notifications whatever you are doing.

Oliver Marshall
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