Developers will have to enable Bubbles for you to start seeing more apps work with this. We’ve reached out to Telegram and WhatsApp to see if they plan to support this feature, and the latter declined to comment. Telegram has yet to respond, while Google says Messages support is coming soon.

Whether you favor Telegram, WhatsApp, Messages, Instagram, Facebook Messenger or any of the plethora of chat apps available today, it can be a drag to stay on top of all the people trying to contact you. The Android 11 beta features an area in the notifications shade that consolidates all your messages so you can address alerts that need a response before attending to your Instagram likes or Twitter hearts. If you can’t reply immediately, you can also set a reminder to get to it later. I like having all my conversations organized neatly at the top, but there are other things also taking up space in the notification shade like media controls that might make this less like Marie Kondo-ing and more like cluttering. 

Easier device and media controls

One of the things that would take up room in the Quick Settings area above your list of notifications is a new persistent media player. In this beta version, you’d have to first enable developer options (by repeatedly hitting the Build number at the bottom of the About Phone page), then enabling the “Media resumption” setting. If you don’t do this, media controls will look the same as they did in Android 10. 

Screenshot by Cherlynn Low

After I activated the feature, a small widget about the size of 3×2 Quick Settings icons appeared, offering buttons for play/pause, next and previous track. This is a smart way for Google to offer easy access to these controls without taking up space in the alerts list below, though it doesn’t display album art the way the notification-based controls do. I’m impressed that Google managed to keep the same six shortcuts in the Quick Settings panel, which previously was a single row of icons, by expanding to two lanes and squeezing the original set of options to the right. This way, it managed to place this media widget to the left for more controls. If you’d rather a simpler interface, you can disable Media resumption.

In Android 11, you’ll see more settings pop up when you long-press the power button. In addition to shortcuts for Google Pay, Emergency information, shutting down and restarting like before, the page will also show your connected devices. I had to make sure my Google Home app was installed first, and after I did, all my synced lights showed up. My smart speakers, displays and clocks didn’t, though. Google told Engadget that not all devices on the Home app currently show up, and that “we’re working on adding support for more devices.”

Each light had an individual tile, while the first tile of the grid controlled all of them — you can rearrange this order if you prefer. I only have about five devices connected so this page was fairly manageable, but I imagine it’d get unwieldy if you have more than ten connected. Tapping the “All lights” tile once turned them all on at 8 percent, which is similar to one of my preset routines. My coworker Chris Velazco had his lights turned all the way up to 100 percent when he did this, so it’s clear our experience varied. We’ve reached out to Google to clarify how this works and will update when we hear back. I couldn’t find a way to add other settings though, like turning them to 50 percent after the 8 percent level, so I’ll probably still rely on my Google Home for my preset lighting profiles.