I’m working on an Android app and need to monitor when new messages arrive from messaging services and email clients. While finding information about SMS broadcast receivers is straightforward through online searches, I’m struggling to figure out if there are equivalent broadcast receivers for instant messaging applications or when new emails come in.
I’ve tried looking through the Android documentation but can’t seem to find the right approach. Does anyone know if Android provides built-in broadcast receivers for these types of notifications? Or would I need to use a different method like notification listeners?
Any guidance on this would be really helpful. I’m particularly interested in detecting messages from popular chat applications and standard email clients.
The NotificationListenerService approach is spot on, but I’ll add some stuff from when I actually built this. NLS works great most of the time, but you’ll run into issues with apps that bundle notifications or use custom layouts. WhatsApp and Telegram love bundling multiple messages into one notification, which makes catching individual messages a pain. For email, Gmail and Outlook handle things differently - Gmail’s way more consistent when you’re trying to pull sender and subject info. If your use case allows it, accessibility services might be worth a shot, though you’ll need even more sensitive permissions. Android 13+ made notification policies stricter, so definitely test across different API levels. The biggest pain I dealt with was telling apart notification updates from brand new ones - you need solid logic there or you’ll process the same message over and over.
NotificationListenerService is your best bet, but there are some gotchas. I built something similar last year and learned that getting notification content differs wildly between messaging apps. Some encrypt or hide their notification data, making it tough to pull out actual message text. Email clients work better since they usually follow standard notification patterns. You’ll need to babysit the service lifecycle though - the system can kill it, so build in proper restart logic. Users also forget to grant notification access permission, so make your onboarding flow crystal clear. One thing that bit me: some phone manufacturers have extra battery optimization settings that mess with notification listening. You’ll probably want to walk users through disabling those too.
yep, u should use the notification listener service. third-party apps don’t allow broadcast receivers for privacy, so it’s the only way to catch incoming msgs. just remember to ask for BIND_NOTIFICATION_LISTENER_SERVICE permission and get users to enable it in their settings.