More than four notifications appear as dots with Android P

Phones with Android P Developer Preview 2 or the public beta of Android P, have a new feature that tidies up the device’s notifications — but only slightly.

The top bar — where you find all your notifications — now shows little dots when you have more than four notifications. One dot represents a fifth notification, two dots represent six notifications and three dots indicates seven or more notifications.

This update seems especially catered to notched phones, as multiple notifications can be unsightly on a notched Android handset. The phone seems to push your older notifications further down the list. This means older notifications will appear as dots.

While this update seems catered to notch phones, devices without a notch are subjected to the change as well. Currently on my Pixel 2 XL there seems to be no way of changing this feature back to the original settings.

If there are 5 notification, only 1 dot will appear.
2 Dots if there are 6 notifications and 3 dots for 7 or more notifications. Neat. 👌

— Mohit Pahwa (@iMohitpahwa) May 14, 2018

This was first discovered by Twitter user @imohitpatwa.

Alongside the dot update, there are plenty of other new features, such as the ability to disable certain notifications.