How can I programmatically open/close notifications in Android?

Question

I\'ve searched everywhere, but can\'t find anything in the SDK or on Google on how to do this. I know it\'s possible because all the custom launchers are able to do it via a

Answer 1

The answer from Ashwin works for Android versions below 4.2.2 (i.e. below version 17). In 4.2.2, the "expand" method was changed to "expandNotificationsPanel". If you don't use that method name for 4.2.2 and above, you will get a Null Pointer Exception. So the code should be:

Object sbservice = getSystemService( "statusbar" );
Class statusbarManager = Class.forName( "android.app.StatusBarManager" );
Method showsb;
if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= 17) {
    showsb = statusbarManager.getMethod("expandNotificationsPanel");
}
else {
    showsb = statusbarManager.getMethod("expand");
}
showsb.invoke( sbservice );

And appropriate permission should be added to AndroidManifest.

Obviously, this is not part of the published API, so this is not guaranteed to work in the future and many people would advise against doing this.