So you’re right in the middle of binge-watching your new favorite show and someone is texting you important information but you left your phone in the other room. It’s happened to all of us. But it doesn’t have to. What if you can get Android notifications on your TV? Here’s how.
If you use XBMC/Kodi for your television consumption (like I do), and you have and Android phone (like I do), you’re in luck!
I’ve talked before about the Yatse app and how it’s awesome.
I’ve also talked about the Yatse Call Plugin that makes XBMC/Kodi pause when your phone rings.
But now I’m here to talk about the Yatse Notification Plugin. This plugin app enables your Android notifications to be sent to XBMC/Kodi as notifications. It gives you one settings button that simply lets you check the apps that you want to have their notifications sent to XBMC/Kodi.
That’s it! Now, when your phone gets a notification from an app that you checked, you’ll see it popup on your TV.
Don’t worry that it will make annoying sounds while you’re watching TV, because XBMC/Kodi makes it so notifications are silent while media is playing.
Also, the content of the notifications will vary from app to app. Some of them, like Google Hangouts, have the person and the message in the notification, so you’ll get a good preview of the message. Only the first line appears. Some others will just say something like “1 message from so-and-so.”
Another thing to keep in mind is that it only sends the notification when Yatse is connected to your XBMC/Kodi. Usually, that means you would have to be in your house/network for it to send notifications. That way, it’s not popping up notifications when you’re not home. This applies to the Yatse Call Plugin, also. However, I suppose it’s possible for it to be connected all the time, if you are using a domain or subdomain for which you’ve setup port forwarding on your router.
A word of caution: Anybody else that watches TV in your house will be able to see notifications. I’m fine with that because I have nothing to hide from my wife and kids, but perhaps keep this in mind as you select which apps to notify.
But sometimes it is pretty funny to see my wife’s reaction when she sees a text message out of context :-)
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