Android has allowed blocking notifications from selected apps for a while now, but it was all-or-nothing. Android O aims to give users more control over what notifications they want to see, through the new Notification Channels API.

Here's how it works. Applications can create notification channels, which are categories that users can individually turn on and off. For example, Twitter could create separate channels for mentions, likes, follows, etc. Notification channels can also be added or removed by the app at any time, so a messaging app could have each conversation as a channel - perfect for muting a large group conversation.

This has the potential to make notifications far more manageable on Android, but it's now up to apps to implement it.

Source: Android Developers

UPDATE: 2017/03/28 10:15am PDT BY

Google has uploaded a video about changes in Android O for developers, and it shares some new details about how Notification Channels will work. Each channel can have custom vibration and light settings, different privacy levels for showing up on the lockscreen, and snooze settings. The video also includes screenshots of how the feature will actually look - seen in the images above.

See the video below for the original source (we even skipped to the relevant section for you).

Source: YouTube