Hey there!
Love the software, no problems. 
With the Oreo update, now it shows it as a notification all the time, instead of something running in the background. If i turn off the notification for the app, then it doesn’t show me the bandwidth usage when I swipe down. Any suggestions on what do to here?
Google requires that any apps that run in the background have a persistent notification for privacy and security reasons.
If we remove the notification then it’s possible Google will remove us from Google Play.
“Present users with a persistent notification and unique icon that clearly identifies the app.”
Please note, GlassWire is unique from most of our competitors because our company does not monitor what apps and websites you visit. Your personal data never leaves your device and we could not see your app usage or details even if we wanted to.
https://www.glasswire.com/privacy/
Unfortunately some of our competitors not only track all your app usage in detail, but they keep it in a database along with your personally identifiable information. 
We know this because their privacy policies actually say this!
This persistent notification change was made by Google with Oreo to add more security and privacy to your phone, and if we remove this functionality it will be violating Google’s own rules. Plus, do you really want apps running in the background that you don’t know about? We don’t want that.
It didn’t show the icon in the top bar unless I swiped down before, on Nougat. Oreo it shows the icon there all the time.
That’s true. This change to show the persistent notifications was made by Google’s Android, not by us.
https://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-to-disable-persistent-notifications-in-android-oreo/ - If you can get Android 8.1 this article says you can disable this feature for some apps.
There is an important sentence in your post, Ken, and I hope this is worthy of the post-12-month bump, but it may not be. Glasswire’s approach to privacy is important enough IMHO to note that
"Please note, GlassWire is unique from most of our competitors because __our company not monitor what apps and websites you visit__ "
should be
“Please note, GlassWire is unique from most of our competitors because __our company does not monitor what apps and websites you visit__ .”