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Gmail Adds Attachment Previews to Android Notifications in Limited Rollout

The change is arriving via a quiet, server-side rollout to select accounts, trading text snippets for glanceable file cues in some notifications.

Overview

  • Compact alerts can show a paperclip indicator, and expanded notifications add a pill that identifies the attachment type such as an image or PDF.
  • For many users, expanding the alert displays thumbnails for images and a pill showing PDF type and filename, offering quicker triage at a glance.
  • When an attachment is detected, the preview can replace the usual email body snippet, requiring opening Gmail to read the message text.
  • The rollout remains slow and selective with no formal announcement from Google, first spotted by 9to5Google and corroborated by Droid Life, Android Central, Times Now, and SamMobile.
  • Behavior varies by account, with some reporters unable to replicate full previews, indicating a staged server-side switch rather than an app update.