Notifications tend to make for a lot of noise on our devices. Every app you install wants to send you notifications and you obviously have to be picky about which one can, and cannot light up your screen with an alert. Android has a sort of Do not disturb mode that lets only important notifications through however, if there are one or two apps that you simply cannot afford to miss notifications from, you can use Pixel Pulse. It’s an that can wake your screen for important notifications.
The app is meant for the Pixel 3 phone hence its name. The Pixel 3 doesn’t have an LED light anymore so this app is supposed to be a stand-in. It will ‘pulse’ or light up your screen periodically when you have notifications.
Download Pixel Pulse and run the app. It needs access to your notifications, and you need to select which apps can show you these pulse notifications. We strongly recommend that you keep this list tame and that you manage how often your display lights up to remind you about the notification.
By default, your display will light up every minute which is a lot even if you’ve only added two apps to it so tap the Pulse Interval option, and customize the interval or your battery won’t last long.
You can choose to hide the content of a notification. This is what it looks like when it lights up your screen.
The app is free and in beta but it also has paid features. If you decide to pay for the premium features, make sure that the app works well enough on your device to make the purchase worth it.
As a paid user, you will be able to choose the color of the notification, and the icon. With the free version, you don’t see which app a notification is from. You only see the Pixel Pulse’s own icon telling you there’s a new notification. The color may not be worth the upgrade but the icon definitely is.
Pixel Pulse may have been built with the Pixel 3 in mind but nothing about it restricts it to select devices. You must be running Android 8.0 or above and that might be somewhat of a problem. Most mainstream devices have already received Android 8.0 which, at this point, is a little over a year old. There are still some devices that haven’t received it and if you own one of them, this app will not work.
