How To: Color Code Android Notifications Without Root Access

Theming is one of the many facets of Android that gives it a leg up on its iOS competition. With the right home launcher and icon theme, you can completely change the look and feel of your device in just a few minutes.

• Don't Miss: How to Make Your Android Unique & Theme Everything

In the spirit of customization and theming, today we'll show you how to ditch your ticker-style or heads-up notifications for unique, Material Design-inspired notifications.

Step 1: Install the App

Notify BETA, from developer Skytek65, is a new concept on an old feature. With a visually-appealing circular animation that expands to expose your notification and app icon towards the top portion of your display, this dynamic new design themes the notification to match colors with the originating app.

• Install Notify BETA from the Google Play Store

Step 2: Set It Up

Before setting up the app, for those of you running Android 5.0 or above, you will also need to install HeadsOff, which is required to toggle off heads-up notifications and run Notify as smoothly as possible. Once you're ready to run the app, launch it and enable Notification access.

Step 3: Try It Out

As an application in the beta stage, there aren't any preferences to set up as of now, so feel free to give the dev some feedback and maybe you'll see your suggestions in its next release. For now, try it out and enjoy it.

You may experience some glitches at times, but overall, the application works very well and gave me something cool to look at. I can see the potential in Notify and hope the developer implements some preferences, like blacklisting, to maximize the experience.

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