Now, to many, this may be extremely useful. And if you’re like us, then you probably want to keep it on. If for nothing else than the decreased chance that you may miss something you care about seeing or reading. But for anyone else that doesn’t really need or want it, this guide is for you. And, really, it’s for people that like the feature as well. Because someday you may want to disable it even if only temporarily. With that being said, you can find all the steps below that are necessary to prevent apps from showing up as bubbles in Android 12.
How to prevent apps from showing up as bubbles in Android 12
The bubbles for Android 12 are enabled by default. So if you don’t mind them you can leave things as is as you won’t have to worry about turning them on. Also worth noting is that not every app will work with them. And that being the case, you may not even have many apps installed that utilize bubbles in the first place. If you don’t want bubbles popping up on top of other things you’re doing, here’s how to make sure they aren’t enabled.
Go to the settings menu
Start by heading to the settings menu. As with many of our how-to guides that revolve around turning features on or off on Android, you can find this in the settings.
Open the notifications menu
Next, scroll to notifications which is towards the top of the settings menu. It should be the fourth option down. Although this may be different for some users. On Pixel devices running Android 12, it’s the fourth option down. But on other devices running Android 12 it may be a different order.
Tap on ‘Bubbles’
Once inside the notifications menu, you shouldn’t have to do any scrolling at all. Bubbles will be listed towards the top, and you’ll want to tap on this menu to access the toggle.
Tap the toggle to disable the bubbles feature
Last but not least, tap on the toggle, which should be on if you didn’t initially change anything after the Android 12 update. This will toggle the feature off and conversations will no longer show up as bubbles. If at any point you want to turn it back on, you can come back to this menu and toggle it on again.
Floating ‘Bubbles’ icons will only show up for some conversation apps
As noted above, bubbles won’t be compatible with most apps. Only for conversation apps, generally, and only for some of them. With that said, if you only use one conversation app, then you shouldn’t have to worry about your screen filling up with bubbles and overwhelming your display. Keep in mind that having the bubbles enabled does make things more convenient if you tend to chat a lot. So it may be worth keeping on.
