Notification Access and SA Notification Listener

New user of SoundAbout, on a Verizon Galaxy Note 3, stock ROM, Android 5.0.

As I'm exploring how to configure SA for my purposes, I've come across the "Notification Access" area of settings, where "SA Notification Listener" is one of the options.

1. Does this need to be enabled/checked for SA to work properly when it's in use? I assume yes, so I do have it enabled, but if this isn't correct, please advise.

2. I don't want SA to be running all the time - if I set SoundAbout Service to "off" in the App itself, I see that the "SA Notification Listener" is still checked, and SA is included in the Running Apps, with 1 process and 1 service. Is this changing how my phone handles audio routing in any way?

If I physically connect my phone to my car to use Android Auto, I don't need SA at all; if I want to use my phone by bluetooth only, without Android Auto, this is where I'm hoping to have SA enable more functionality. So when not in use, I don't want SA to have any affect on my phone.

1) It should be checked so SoundAbout can respond and update the vibrate/silent notification status of the phone.

2) SoundAbout will no longer respond to things like headset plug-in, phone ring and won't let you change the audio output. I would set things to let app decide before turning off the SoundAbout Service. One problem with shutting off SoundAbout Service is when you are using SoundAbout TTS. The SoundAbout TTS wrapper needs the SoundAbout Service in order to swap the audio output.

I will look at setting the media audio, phone audio to "let app decide" when the service gets shut off.

Also, the SoundAbout TTS should also just use the current audio output if SoundAbout TTS is disabled.

Thanks for the reply and info!

I still don't fully understand this notification listener. Is there a con to not using it. I hardly go into silent or vibrate. If I do, it's automatically by the phone.

SoundAbout needs to know when you or the phone go into vibrate/silent mode so that it can respond accordingly.

It never used to, but since the changes in 5.0, these new listeners are necessary. They are still being changed in Android in 6.0.1, so it is getting fairly confusing.

I see. Well, being that I still am on Android 4 and won't be up to 5, 6, or 7 until at least close to 2017, I'll assume I don't need to have it running then, right?

If you change the API level on this page, it will show the minimum:
http://developer.android.com/reference/android/service/notification/NotificationListenerService.html

API 18 is Android 4.3 .

I have 4.4.4. So am I fine with the listener service?

If it asks you to allow SoundAbout to use the Listener Service, I would so that it can detect the phone changes.

Okay. It never asked me. I happened to notice it in the Security settings, enabled it. I eventually I turned it back off, never noticed any loss in functionality or any ask since. I'll assume I'm fine.

Thanks.

OK, good. Thank you.