{"id":549867,"date":"2026-04-25T10:46:16","date_gmt":"2026-04-25T10:46:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/549867\/"},"modified":"2026-04-25T10:46:16","modified_gmt":"2026-04-25T10:46:16","slug":"whatsapp-prepares-android-notification-bubble-support","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/549867\/","title":{"rendered":"WhatsApp prepares Android notification bubble support"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t<img width=\"1600\" height=\"800\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/WhatsApp-logo-3.jpg\" class=\"skip-lazy wp-post-image\" alt=\"\"  decoding=\"async\" fetchpriority=\"high\"\/><\/p>\n<p>\u201cBubbles\u201d are an underrated part of Android notifications, with WhatsApp apparently working to add support just like another Meta app already had.<\/p>\n<p>Notification bubbles are often known by another name \u2013 \u201cChat heads.\u201d Meta\u2019s Facebook Messenger app introduced the idea on Android ages ago, with a floating contact photo opening to the full chat, just in an overlay atop whatever else you\u2019re doing on the device. It\u2019s not for everyone, but Google has been improving on this idea by natively integrating it into Android for any app to utilize.<\/p>\n<p>WhatsApp appears to now adopting support.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/wabetainfo.com\/whatsapp-beta-is-testing-notification-bubbles-on-android\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">WABetaInfo notes<\/a> that, in new beta versions, WhatsApp for Android is building out support for notification bubbles. It\u2019s not live yet for end users, but an early preview shows a pretty standard implementation. WhatsApp conversations can be sent to a bubble, with the floating UI letting you swap back and forth between conversations from WhatsApp and other apps.<\/p>\n<p>\tAdvertisement &#8211; scroll for more content<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" height=\"759\" width=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/whatsapp-bubbles-1.webp.jpeg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-712804\"  \/><\/p>\n<p>This isn\u2019t the same as Facebook Messenger\u2019s implementation. Facebook Messenger supports Android\u2019s native bubbles on Pixels, but on other devices, it uses a semi-custom implementation that only works for Messenger. Other Android apps using Bubbles end up showing separately from Facebook\u2019s \u201cChat heads.\u201d It\u2019s nice to see that WhatsApp doesn\u2019t seem to be creating the same layer of confusion here.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s no word on when this might go live for all users, but with <a href=\"https:\/\/9to5google.com\/2026\/03\/26\/android-17-beta-3-adds-bubbles\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Android continuing to enhance bubbles,<\/a> it\u2019s likely not too far away.<\/p>\n<p>More on WhatsApp:<\/p>\n<p>Follow Ben:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/NexusBen\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">Twitter\/X<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.threads.net\/@nexusben\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">Threads<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/bsky.app\/profile\/nexusben.com\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Bluesky<\/a>, and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/nexusben\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">Instagram<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\t\t<a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/google.com\/preferences\/source?q=https:\/\/9to5google.com\" aria-label=\"Add 9to5Google as a preferred source on Google\"><br \/>\n\t\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" class=\"google-preferred-source-badge-dark\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/google-preferred-source-badge-dark.png\" alt=\"Add 9to5Google as a preferred source on Google\"\/><br \/>\n\t\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" class=\"google-preferred-source-badge-light\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/google-preferred-source-badge-light.png\" alt=\"Add 9to5Google as a preferred source on Google\"\/><br \/>\n\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"disclaimer-affiliate\">FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. <a href=\"https:\/\/9to5mac.com\/about\/#affiliate\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">More.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t<script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><script async src=\"\/\/www.instagram.com\/embed.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cBubbles\u201d are an underrated part of Android notifications, with WhatsApp apparently working to add support just like another&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":466016,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[59,86,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-549867","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-technology","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=549867"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549867\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/466016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=549867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=549867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=549867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}