How to check which notifications are active in status bar in Android Dev?

I want to be able TO CHECK (in the code) IF THE NOTIFICATION IS VISIBLE TO THE USER. (i.e. can the user see
the notification in the status bar?).

How can I do this?

You can’t, sorry. Update: Now possible with Android 4.3+ http://developer.android.com/reference/android/service/notification/NotificationListenerService.html#getActiveNotifications()

However, you can always simply cancel() it — canceling a Notification that is not on-screen is perfectly fine. Conversely, you can always safely call notify() again for the same Notification, and it too will not cause a problem if the Notification is already on-screen.

EDIT:

NotificationManager.getActiveNotifications() was added in API 23 if you don’t want to use the NotificationListenerService