In the notifications section of mobiles, notifications about new episodes only says “new episode” both in the notification title and in the subtitle. Only at the end of the subtitle at least the specific podcast title is mentioned.
Only seeing “new episode” has no added value for the users, and one has to click on each notification to see if an episode is interesting or not.
Solution:
Use the title of the individual episodes notifications for the podcast title. And use the notification subtitle for the episode title.
This way users see immediately if a new episode mentioned in mobile’s notifications area is interesting and relevant. If not, the can swipe away the notification without having to open it. Otherwise, they can click on it.
If it’s technically possible, it would be perfect to have an “add to playlist” button directly within the notifications. This way it wouldn’t be necessary to do several click to add an episode and then having to come back to the rest of notifications again.
Thanks and hopefully you like my suggestion (based on my long Google Podcasts experience)!
I think this has been raised before and I for one do not want to see the episode title in the notifications as it may contain a spoiler for a sports event I have yet to catch up on.
According to my prior search, the issue hasn’t been raised yet, otherwise I wouldn’t have made the effort.
And regarding your spoiler prevention argument: I would say that in this case the better workaround is to not access the app (or not activate specific sports podcasts notifications) nor news nor switch on the TV until you wanna know the result of a game, and not to make notifications so “discrete” that they make hardly any sense.
In the “Inbox” within the app, you also see episode titles, logically and luckily! So following your argument, you’d have to switch off all episode titles everywhere
As explained in my original feature request, in my opinion notifications without almost any relevant content don’t make much sense, they could as well be left away completely. But I think the better way is that those afraid of spoilers turn them off
If there are more users afraid of seeing episode titles within notifications, maybe a setting “discrete notifications” could be introduced? But I guess that there are not too many users nor reasons against episode titles in notifications, and that the more usual and used case is to show episode titles and other useful info within notifications (like Google Podcasts did, and like other apps usually do too).
If notifications stay as little useful as they are, I’ll probably switch them off and use the Inbox instead, but I guess little useful features shouldn’t be the aim of the app.
I already do all of those things, I think my use case case is just as valid as yours. In your case you can check the inbox (which I avoid) but there is no way to unknow something you have already seen.
Sure, I respect your use case - your initial reply just sounded as if you took yours as the more valid one.
I still think that the more common use case is the one to not make “discrete” notifications the default ones. If the majority of users preferred “discrete” notifications, it should be default, otherwise maybe an optional setting.
Think of WhatsApp notifications: most people probably prefer to see a preview of the sender and the message. If you don’t want to see that, you’ll probably turn notifications off or set them to “minimized” in your mobile’s notification settings.
Or, if the resources allow it, the app could simply offer both options, like through a kind of “notifications designer”, which could make us both happy
The app already allows selecting if to show the podcasts or episode’s image - I think it’s good to have such choices, and as notifications are important, there should maybe be a choice as well.
Btw, podcast images should also be part of the notifications, in my opinion, as they make it much easier to cognitively filter out important podcasts.
Maybe simply compare how Google did it (or recommends it to Android developers), as Google usually is quite experienced and does a lot of testing when it comes to designing things like notifications in a user-friendly way.
I have no issue with it being user selectable as to show content on the notification or not. Actually this is already a baked in option in Android if you go to the app’s notification settings. I would just want to be sure I still get notified that new episodes are available but leaving it to me to check to see which podcasts they are for and if I want to see the details of the new episode(s).
Though I think that specifically wanting to avoid seeing the episode title is a rare use case, I do like the idea of being able to choose how much detail we see for each item. People will always have different preferences in terms of seeing the maximum number of episodes listed on one screen vs. seeing the maximum detail per episode.
It’s just a different design. For example, if you are having things being automatically downloaded, they can also be automatically added to the queue. I never really use the new episode notifications, I just go into the app. Lots of people use the Inbox as their “triage” screen to decide what they do and don’t want to keep and have added to their queue.
If I recall, Google Podcasts never had a way to automatically add new episodes to your queue which is one of the reasons I moved away from it. I’d rather things just automatically show up in my Queue so all I have to do is hit play.
I subscribed to many podcasts, and many post several episodes a day (like news podcasts).
So enqueuing or downloading all new episodes isn’t an option for me (and probably for many others neither).
I like the inbox (which Google Podcasts didn’t have), but the advantage of notifications is that you can select your most liked podcasts for notifications, while the inbox always shows all new episodes (which could be many if you don’t check regularly).
Also, not every episode of most liked podcasts that I activated notifications for is always interesting or relevant. That’s why I’m missing episode titles in notifications, and I believe they would definitely make more sense than repeating “new episode from …” two times in the notifications and in each notification again.
I know that there’s action links in the notifications of the Android timer (like to add another minute or to stop it), but do you think it would be possible to add an “Add to queue” link within episodes notifications?
That would be very practical and save a lot of clicks and swipes!
I don’t remember seeing an Android notification that allowed you to “do something” - other than take you to the thing that initiated the notification. That’s an intriguing idea though.
