Here's what the problem was: Android 8.0 Oreo, released in August 2017, introduced "notification channels" to Android phones.
This feature is pretty convenient, in theory. It allows users to assign priority to different types of notification. For example, I could set a Facebook notification to "Urgent" importance, meaning it would make a noise and show a message on my screen, and a Facebook friend request to "Medium" importance, meaning I'd see a message, but hear no sound.
The problem is that apps have to be individually updated by their third-party developers to include notification channel functionality. Until an app was optimized for Android 8.0 Oreo, users couldn't assign any importance to notifications from that app.
This means for the past few months, it was impossible to change WhatsApp notifications at all. You couldn't control whether it made a noise or showed an icon, or disable certain notifications without disabling all of the app's notifications.
This was quite annoying for Android users. Android Police reported that the issue was starred 216 times.
Finally, the nuisance is at an end.
WhatsApp has been updated to accommodate notification channels. They've showed up in the app's 2.18.18 beta.
There are 10 notification channels that you can now customize for different settings: group notifications, message notifications, chat history backup, critical app alerts, failure notifications, media playback, uncategorized, other notifications, sending media, and silent notifications. This means you could put high importance on your message notifications, but low importance on your group notifications, and disable uncategorized notifications, for example.
WhatsApp did not respond to a request for comment.
The customization is super easy to do. The next time you see a WhatsApp notification on your Android device, press and hold it, then select "All Categories."
Then, you can choose what to do with each notification
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