Android L, and its new material design have made quite the impression but unless you own a Nexus device and don’t mind your phone flaking on you now and then, you aren’t going to be able to check out the new features. This is where the amazing and exceptionally active developer community comes in. Heads-up notifications is a new Android app that mimics Android L’s heads up notifications on your device. You can interact with the notification just like you can on Android L and the app does not require the Xposed framework to be installed nor does it call for a rooted device.

You will have to enable the app once it’s been installed and it goes without saying that it will be able to access all your notifications. Depending on the type of notification you get, you can interact with it. You can open an email that you just received or open a file that you’ve just downloaded. Like the heads up notifications in Android L, these too can be dismissed and they play nice with full screen apps like Cut the rope 2.

 

Apart from imitating the heads up notification, the app also tries its hand at notifications on the lock screen though in our tests, the results were not satisfactory. The notification appears when you unlock your screen and not on the lock screen itself. To enable it, tap the more button and go to the app’s settings. Here you’ll also find an app filter option that will let you choose which notifications you should get a heads up alert for. You can mute the applications you don’t want to receive alerts for from a list of installed apps.

Heads-up notifications also lets you set notification priority; you can select critical and urgent notifications which will include emergency alerts or on-going calls. You can select to receive important alerts such as emails and text messages, and you can get normal alerts which are notifications from old apps (something of a vague concept here). These three types are enabled by default and you can enable two more types of alerts; non-important and contextual.

 

Although the app doesn’t handle lock screen notifications well, it does everything else really well. By providing customization options and giving the user complete control over which apps to receive heads up notifications for, the app has done more than just replicate a feature of Android L. Even if you aren’t dying to try Android L and some of its new features, this app is worth a try.

Install Heads-up notifications from the Google Play Store