I hate persistent notifications. I like dropping down my notification shade and seeing nothing there, otherwise I get very OCD and feel like there's something that requires my attention, but then I see there really isn't because it's just a persistent notification. Even if you don't mind these and even if these always get pushed to the bottom of the list, they can clutter up your notification drop-down and make it more difficult to manage. Have you tried checking out and clearing up a few Gmail notifications in Android Nougat? Unbundling and expanding/collapsing wreaks havoc on your eyes and fingers, and it's much worse when there's a persistent notification below them.

All of this introduction is to tell you how ecstatic I am — and you should be — that these are getting slightly demoted in Android O. Instead of showing up like all regular notifications, they are a little greyed out and collapsed to a single line. This compact look causes much less visual clutter and makes it easier to see which notifications are important and need to be acted on and which ones are just there as an FYI or for a service to run.

Persistent notifications are fully displayed on Android Nougat (left) but collapsed on O (right)

If you use persistent notifications to monitor something or as a permanent reminder, you will still be able to expand any of them to see their content. I think that's a great compromise between design and usability.

Expanding the Facebook Messenger persistent notification

Oh Google, can we get this on all Android devices, from Gingerbread to O, pretty please?