LocalNotifications: default Android notification channel can't be configured or disabled

[th0rgall]

Feature Request

Plugin

LocalNotifications

Description

I'm trying to control which notification channels are used by our app, so they are all meaningful for our users.

To this end, I created my own default channel for Firebase push notifications (following https://capacitorjs.com/docs/apis/push-notifications#push-notification-channel), with a custom ID & localized name. I'm also targeting that channel for scheduled LocalNotification notifications.

But still, another channel called "Default" would keep appearing after each app open. This is not a meaningful channel name for our users.

I eventually found that LocalNotification creates this channel by default when the plugin loads:

capacitor-plugins/local-notifications/android/src/main/java/com/capacitorjs/plugins/localnotifications/LocalNotificationsPlugin.java

Lines 48 to 52 in 9d20478

	public void load() {
	super.load();
	notificationStorage = new NotificationStorage(getContext());
	manager = new LocalNotificationManager(notificationStorage, getActivity(), getContext(), this.bridge.getConfig());
	manager.createNotificationChannel();

capacitor-plugins/local-notifications/android/src/main/java/com/capacitorjs/plugins/localnotifications/LocalNotificationManager.java

Lines 103 to 110 in 9d20478

	public void createNotificationChannel() {
	// Create the NotificationChannel, but only on API 26+ because
	// the NotificationChannel class is new and not in the support library
	if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= Build.VERSION_CODES.O) {
	CharSequence name = "Default";
	String description = "Default";
	int importance = android.app.NotificationManager.IMPORTANCE_DEFAULT;
	NotificationChannel channel = new NotificationChannel(DEFAULT_NOTIFICATION_CHANNEL_ID, name, importance);

Platform(s)

Android

Preferred Solution

I would prefer either one of these solutions:

A. The ability to disable default channel creation in the plugin settings, with a boolean flag.
B. The ability to configure the ID and name of the channel that will be created (and used) by default. In this case I would anyway need to upsert the channel with a localized name using JS code, since the plugin settings are static.

Alternatives

I'm currently deleting the default channel with JS code once my app opens, after every app open. It's a little messy, but it works.

What makes this workaround extra unappealing, is that Android might show a information box on the notification channel settings page that mentions: "1 category deleted".

Additional Context