Android how to hide NotificationCompat.Builder notification`s icon on status bar?

Question

My question is quite simple, but I couldn't get around it for a long time so I'm asking here.

How to hide the ongoing notification's icon, that is displayed in the status bar? I am creating the notification with NotificationCompat.Builder object. I tried to skip (when the option to show icon is unchecked) the builder.setSmallIcon() function call, but that resulted in no notification on the notifications screen.

Answer 1

Since Android 4.1 (API 16) it's possible to specify a notification's priority. If you set that flag to PRIORITY_MIN the notification icon won't show up on the statusbar.

builder.setPriority(NotificationCompat.PRIORITY_MIN);

---

As of Android 8.0 Oreo (API level 26) you have to create a NotificationChannel and set its importance to IMPORTANCE_MIN:

NotificationChannel channel = 
      new NotificationChannel(channelId, channelName, NotificationManager.IMPORTANCE_MIN);
notificationManager.createNotificationChannel(channel);
...
builder.setChannelId(channel.getId());

Answer 2

How to hide the ongoing notifications icon, that is displayed in status bar?

You don't.

I tried to skip (when the option to show icon is unchecked) the builder.setSmallIcon() function call, but that resulted in no notification in notifications screen.

Correct. Since the primary point of raising a Notification is to put an icon in the status bar, there is no means to not put an icon in the status bar.