---
title: "Customize Notifications"
slug: "android-customizing-notifications"
description: "Explains Android notification customization, covering notification styles, layouts, settings, SDK configurations, and user experience improvements."
updated: 2026-09-01T11:10:37Z
published: 2026-09-01T11:10:37Z
canonical: "academy.insiderone.com/android-customizing-notifications"
---

> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://academy.insiderone.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Customize Notifications

## Configuring Notification Icons

Android lets you customize the way your notifications look.

![](https://cdn.document360.io/c6df4583-da94-4cb2-bb8a-be0cbdd11109/Images/Documentation/image-1782305195596.png)

1: Small icon, 2: Accent color, 3: Large icon

## Configuring Small Push Notification Icon

By default, the system uses your launcher icon as the logo in your push notifications. Since **Android 4.4**, Google guidelines require **a white and transparent flat icon**. If you do not follow the guidelines, your notification icon may look broken as in the images below.

To quickly generate small icons with the correct settings, we recommend using the **Android asset Studio.**

To fix this you need to add a notification icon compliant with Google guidelines in your **drawable** resources and specify it in your **strings.xml** file:

```java
<resources>
    <string name="insider_notification_icon">your_icon_name</string>
</resources>
```

Please note that "your_icon_name" is the name of the icon should be **without extension and/or path.**

Do not forget to create exceptions for your icons on **Dexguard.**

## Configuring Large Push Notification Icon

The large notification icon will show up to the left of the notification text on **Android 4.0.3 - 6.0 devices**, and shows on the right for **Android 7.0+ devices**. If you do not set a large icon, the small icon will be used instead.

You can use a large notification icon by specifying drawable resources within your app. Your icon needs to be in a drawable or mipmap folder. To use it, add its name to your **strings.xml** file:

```java
<resources>
    <string name="insider_notification_large_icon">your_icon_name</string>
</resources>
```

Please note that **your_icon_name** is the name of the icon and should be **without extension and/or path.**

You should create exceptions for your icons on **Proguard.**

## Configuring Advanced Notification Icon

If you want to control the large icon display in advanced notifications (Carousel and Discovery App Push), add the following line into your **values** file:

```java
<resources>
    <bool name="insider_advanced_notification_icon_flag">false</bool>
</resources>
```

If this key is not added, the default value will be **true**, meaning the large icon will be displayed in advanced notifications.

The recommended size for a notification icon is 24×24 dp rendered as 48×48 px (MDPI baseline). The following table shows the icon sizes needed for all Android icon types for all screen densities.

|  | MDPI | HDPI | XHDPI | XXHDPI | XXXHDPI |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Scale | 1x | 1.5x | 2x | 3x | 4x |
| DPI | 160dpi | 240dpi | 320dpi | 480dpi | 640dpi |
| Launcher | 48px | 72px | 96px | 144px | 192px |
| Action Bar | 32px | 48px | 64px | 96px | 128px |
| Small/Contextual | 16px | 24px | 32px | 48px | 64px |
| Notification | 24px | 36px | 48px | 72px | 96px |

## Configuring Accent Color

If you want your push notification to display in a particular color, first add the following line into your **colors.xml** file:

```java
<resources>
    <color name="my_push_notification_color">#222222</color>
</resources>
```

Then add the following line into your **strings.xml** file:

```java
<resources>
    <string name="insider_notification_circle_color">my_push_notification_color</string>
</resources>
```

Please note that the color name that you have defined inside the **colors.xml** (my_push_notification_color) file should be the value of "insider_notification_circle_color" inside the **strings.xml** file as it is shown in the example code above.

## Customizing Notification Sound

If you want to use your own custom sound for notifications, you need to add an audio file to your **app’s raw folder**.

The audio file must be in **mp3** format. The filename must be in lowercase and should not contain any special characters or spaces. The recommended sound duration is 30 seconds.

In order to **play the custom sound** when a push notification is delivered, you need to enter the filename on the **Insider Dashboard** when you create the notification campaign.

Do not forget that, if you want to create custom notification sound, you have to create at least one android channel and select it within campaign. Otherwise, you cannot trigger the sound on users which are Android Versions 8.0+

> The SDK looks up the resources below by name at runtime (Resources#getIdentifier), so build-time shrinkers can strip them. If your project enables shrinkResources = true (especially with shrinkMode = "strict"), add a res/raw/keep.xml file with the names you reference.

```plaintext
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<resources xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools"
    tools:keep="
        @string/insider_notification_*,
        @bool/insider_advanced_notification_icon_flag,
        @integer/insider_notification_push_priority,
        @drawable/ic_notification_insider,
        @drawable/your_large_icon_name,
        @color/my_push_notification_color,
        @raw/*
 " />
<!-- Swap the your_* placeholders for your actual resource names. -->
```