Some apps change their notification importance Some apps such as WhatsApp and Telegram have an extremely annoying behaviour reguarding notifications on Android 8.0.0.

If I head to the Settings app > Apps &amp; notifications > App info > WhatsApp > App notifications, then set Message notifications to be of importance "medium", the setting will stay that way and not change. That's to be expected. Now if I receive a message from someone, the setting appears to be completely ignored, as not only does my phone vibrate and ring, it also reverts back the importance to "urgent".

I do not want my phone to notify me of everything that it might receive, especially instant messaging which is of very little importance most of the time. People can phone me if they need me. The only fix I found so far, is to completely disable notifications for that app, but now I do not get to see whether I received new messages or not by giving a look at the status bar, so I have to unlock my phone and open the app to see if there's anything new.

What could be the reason for this, and most importantly is there a way to fix this?

My phone is a Sony XPeria XZ (F8331) running on Android 8.0.0 (currently the latest update).
Sony XZ has the tendency to change behaviour in the middle of nothing. Try downgrading the Android version and it will work as smooth as you want to see it.