Feature discussion: Suppress notifications based on system filters?

[Achilleas Koutsou]

I've been thinking about possible changes to the Notifications plugin
and I'd like to get some feedback from the devs and users here before
attempting anything.

I've been using the new "Interruptions" feature, introduced in Lollipop,
to suppress notifications (partially or completely). For those not
familiar, the feature allows the user to set a system-wide filter for
notifications. The user can specify a list of priority apps and
contacts, set the phone to "Priority only notifications" mode and that
suppresses every notification that's from an app or a contact not on the
priority list. Also, the user can set the notification mode to "None",
which ignores the priority list and suppresses all notifications. In
both cases ("Priority only" and "None") the system suppresses only sound
and vibration. On-screen notifications still appear and icons are still
placed in the notification area at the top of the screen for all apps
and contacts.

Since all apps and contacts create visible notifications, these get
forwarded by the Notification plugin. So, if I set notifications to
"None", the phone is completely silent and does not vibrate, but I still
receive pop-up notifications on the desktop.

My suggestion: Change the Notification plugin to only forward
notifications to other devices if they are on the priority list, when in
priority mode. In other words, suppress the forwarding of notifications
when the user has selected not to be notified.

API 21 of the NotificationListenerService supports checking whether a
notification matches the current filter settings [1], so the
implementation seems straightforward.

If you think this is a bad idea, or if you like receiving desktop
notifications from the phone when it's filtering mode, how
would you feel about making it an optional setting in the plugin?
I realise that some may want to receive desktop notifications while
suppressing sound & vibration on the phone as a way to keep the phone
silent while still being able to see notifications.

So, what do you think?

--
Achilleas

[1] - 
https://developer.android.com/reference/android/service/notification/NotificationListenerService.html#getCurrentInterruptionFilter()