I fixed Android 16’s disappointing Live Updates with this app

When I used an iPhone for the first time in 2024, one of the features I grew to love was the Dynamic Island and Live Activities. I knew that I wanted Android to copy the feature, and I was pleased to see Samsung do so with One UI 7. Google has finally brought its version, called Live Updates, to Android 16, but the execution leaves a lot to be desired, and Samsung’s implementation is something I’ve missed during my time with the Pixel 10 Pro. Thankfully, a third-party app has gone a long way to solve that issue for me.

Live Updates show you information from ongoing notifications in a small pill to the side of your status bar that can be expanded when tapped on. Google doesn’t allow media playback, ongoing timers, and a host of other notification types to show here, whereas Samsung and other OEMs do. As you can see in the image above, Samsung’s Now Bar can provide quick access to media controls, and that expanded functionality extends to timers and stopwatches, too.

Media controls are what I’ve used the Dynamic Island and Now Bar for the most, so Google’s decision not to include those things makes the Pixel’s Live Updates almost useless to me.

Material Capsule is an app that takes everything the Now Bar and Dynamic Island can do and supercharges it with customisation and plenty of new features. The main thing I want it for is, as you’ve likely deduced, media control, which works perfectly. As you can see in the image above, the app has added a media player that has become a part of my Pixel 10 Pro’s selfie camera cutout.

It definitely looks more like Apple’s version of the feature as opposed to Samsung’s, but I think that’s a good thing. The Now Bar takes up a lot of space beside the camera cutout and limits how many notification icons can display next to it, whereas this stays out of the way.

Customisation is where Material Capsule really shines, and there’s a lot you can do here to get the experience you want. The first thing you need to do once you open the app, aside from granting permissions, is to set the dimensions of where the selfie camera is on your device. The goal is to center and size things so the red circle disappears completely behind the camera while the white edge remains visible.

Once you’ve done that, you can tweak the color palette of the app’s UI, including setting it to follow your device’s Material theme, the animation speed, and more. However, the true customisation begins once you start adding apps, cards, and sliders to the capsule.

Material Capsule can add alerts for system events, like Bluetooth connections, changing volume profiles, and more. Sliders allow you to control your brightness, volume level, or torch brightness all from the capsule, and you can summon them by tapping on the area around your selfie camera at any time. When you’ve got multiple items in the capsule at once, you can swipe through them vertically, like the Dynamic Island or Now Bar.

The setup I’ve opted to use is a dynamic media player to control playback when something is playing, a dynamic torch slider, and a persistent shortcut card. This card can display up to six apps or contact shortcuts, and it’s an easy way to quickly switch into apps I use frequently, much like Samsung’s Edge Panels.

The free version of the apps will occasionally show ads in the capsule when you expand it. It also limits you to a single item in the capsule and locks several customisation options. Thankfully, the pro version of the app isn’t too expensive, and I have no problem recommending it to people. A subscription option is available at 99p for three months and £1.59 for six, but the lifetime options are reasonable, too. You can get lifetime access for just £2.19, with the option to pay more if you want to show the developer some extra support.

The pricing model for this app has impressed me — the free version gives you a good taste of what you can do, and the pricing is more than reasonable, and this is easily the best money I’ve spent on the Play Store this year.

Obviously, I’d still like Google to bake more of these features into Android 16’s Live Updates, but until that happens, I couldn’t be happier with the way this app works, and it’s the perfect option for devices that don’t have Android 16 yet. My 2020 Moto Razr+ is on Android 15, but Material Capsule works the same on that OS version as it does on my Pixel 10 Pro.

Are you disappointed in Google’s implementation of Live Updates? Will you be checking out Material Capsule? Let me know.