All the changes to Notifications on your iPhone in iOS 12

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in iOS
Everyone dreads the chore of dealing with a large influx of Notifications, but we still need them to keep up with what is going on. Fortunately, in iOS 12, Apple made a number of changes to the improve the user experience.






Some changes are minor, such as the decrease in text size. Others are more fundamental changes to the way we manage manage and interact with them.

Grouped notifications

Notification Center now looks much more organized and is easier to parse. Never again will you have to worry about a text chain taking over Notification Center. With iOS 12, alerts are grouped by the app that sent them.




Each individual category can be expanded by tapping on it, then collapsed by tapping the Show Less button that appears above (as well as below) the notifications.

When you swipe left on notifications, there are three options to "Manage", "Clear", or "View" the notification, or stack.

Instant Tuning

Tapping Manage on a notification brings up a new modal dialog box with the options to "delivery quietly," disable, or jump into Settings for further tweaking.




When notifications are delivered quietly, they go straight to Notification Center without alerting the user. This is useful for things you want to know, but don't need to be bothered with constantly.

Siri Suggestions Do Not Disturb mode

Siri Suggestions are seen throughout the new OS. One of our favorites regards notifications and Do Not Disturb mode.

Whenever Siri detects a dinner in your calendar or a movie ticket in Wallet, it will suggest you turn on Do Not Disturb during that time to mute notifications.

Do Not Disturb will be turned off when the appointment ends or when you leave the theater, leaving you with no task to complete. There are surely other situations and calendar appointments where this applies, but we will have to see as time goes on and iOS 12 is installed by more users.

Siri Suggestions notifications

Another use of Siri Suggestions is with often untouched notifications. Any notifications that come in and are rarely interacted with by the user will see a suggestion appear below them to either deliver quietly or disable.

Notification analytics

As part of Screen Time, Apple's new digital health feature, there is a useful area that provides analytics on notifications.




It lets users see how many notifications are received, and which applications are sending them. The goal being users are able to see which apps are pestering them most often and can make changes to which are being sent.

Richer notifications

More actions will be able to be completed right from the notification without the need to launch the app. This includes actions such as liking a photo on Instagram or scrolling through a whole email.

This will take developer support to enable, but we should start seeing the effects shortly after iOS 12 is released this fall.

Bedtime mode

When scheduling Do Not Disturb mode, users are now able to turn on Bedtime mode. Bedtime mode sends all calls and notifications directly to Notification Center.

When the user wakes up in the morning, they aren't greeted by a bloated lock screen full of alerts but are instead eased into them on their own time.

Critical alerts

As is abundantly clear, Apple has put much effort into minimizing notifications and reducing dependence on our devices.

Some alerts however still need to be delivered, even when things, like Do Not Disturb, are turned on. A diabetic who sees their blood sugar levels dropping above or below healthy levels should still receive that alert, even if Do Not Disturb is enabled.

There is a bit of a workaround for developers now, but iOS 12 makes critical alerts more official.

These critical alerts are only for certain app categories such as health apps, and require a special entitlement granted by Apple. So, don't expect all apps to be able to constantly bother you.

Take back Notification Center

All of these changes, and much more will be arriving this fall in iOS 12 for iPhones and iPads.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 12
    AvieshekAvieshek Posts: 100member
    Is the first app Ola Cabs?
  • Reply 2 of 12
    What I have found distracting is having notifications pop up while using Apple Maps. Is there a way to disable them while using the app?
    welshdog
  • Reply 3 of 12
    gbdocgbdoc Posts: 83member
    You write, about notifications, "we still need them to keep up with what is going on". Do we really? Do we really have to know, all the time in realtime, what's happening, what and where our "friends" are doing, what the Kardashians are up to, and on and on? Do we really, really need this? C'mon ...
    watto_cobrawilliamlondon
  • Reply 4 of 12
    dreyfus2dreyfus2 Posts: 1,072member

    If I could only find a way to stop iOS from bringing up notifications for emails it then puts into spam... About 90% of my distractions would be gone. While at it: Having "send to spam" as an option in the swipe gestures in the mail list would save me a three-digit number of unnecessary manual activities a day.

    All the listed things are nice, but of little use to me. I do not use Siri, and the others solve problems I do not really have, since I have very few apps configured to create alerts: email, text messages, one general news app that has its own notification filter, and AI. Mail is really my only problem (well, as far as notifications are concerned :-)
  • Reply 5 of 12
    gbdoc said:
    You write, about notifications, "we still need them to keep up with what is going on". Do we really? Do we really have to know, all the time in realtime, what's happening, what and where our "friends" are doing, what the Kardashians are up to, and on and on? Do we really, really need this? C'mon ...
    No you don't, which is why you can choose not to receive notifications.. or only for the *important* ones..
    And if you have many important ones, ios 12 now manages them better..
    I wonder why one has to point out the obvious..
    watto_cobrabshankericthehalfbeewilliamlondonrandominternetpersonneo-techroundaboutnow
  • Reply 6 of 12
    dreyfus2 said:

    If I could only find a way to stop iOS from bringing up notifications for emails it then puts into spam... About 90% of my distractions would be gone. While at it: Having "send to spam" as an option in the swipe gestures in the mail list would save me a three-digit number of unnecessary manual activities a day.

    All the listed things are nice, but of little use to me. I do not use Siri, and the others solve problems I do not really have, since I have very few apps configured to create alerts: email, text messages, one general news app that has its own notification filter, and AI. Mail is really my only problem (well, as far as notifications are concerned :-)
    In settings for mail, notifications, you can choose only to receive notifications for VIP persons.. So, basically you enable that and flag those persons you want to receive notifications for as VIP's, which you do by clicking the sender in the email and clicking 'Add to VIP'.
    bshankneo-techmike1
  • Reply 7 of 12
    Why isn’t Apple making these changes to notifications in Mojave?!  Dumb.  Mac sucking the hind tit as usual.  :(
    edited August 2018 williamlondon
  • Reply 8 of 12
    dreyfus2 said:

    If I could only find a way to stop iOS from bringing up notifications for emails it then puts into spam... About 90% of my distractions would be gone. While at it: Having "send to spam" as an option in the swipe gestures in the mail list would save me a three-digit number of unnecessary manual activities a day.

    All the listed things are nice, but of little use to me. I do not use Siri, and the others solve problems I do not really have, since I have very few apps configured to create alerts: email, text messages, one general news app that has its own notification filter, and AI. Mail is really my only problem (well, as far as notifications are concerned :-)
    Sounds like you should turn off notifications for Mail.  Since when was email "supposed to be" for urgent/instant messaging anyway?  Do I really need to be alerted to the fact that a package as shipped or that today only I can get 30% swimwear (until tomorrow's 30% off sale, of course)?  In my case, the answer is no.
  • Reply 9 of 12
    Fancy. Onlu if it wanted to update iPhone 5S. Every attempt, =propose to update (from iTunes directly)- ignored. You can click update button as many times as you want. No message no nothing and it does not update anything. I guess some juveenile develpers at Apple never learned quality of software and proper error handling with just this: NOTIFICATION... if there is a problem instead of wasting person's time. Keep tryiong this in finance IT and you will get fired after some time. Apple really needs to change. And I know it from someone who just left their software development team this year.
  • Reply 10 of 12
    Looking forward to sorting this out. The first thing I notice on iOS12 was a very annoying favorites bar above the keyboard in Messages. Sure would like to turn that off.
  • Reply 11 of 12
    Avieshek said:
    Is the first app Ola Cabs?

    Nope, Logi Circle. Ola Cabs is India-only, AFAIK.
  • Reply 12 of 12
    crowleycrowley Posts: 10,453member
    Notification Centre has hung unresponsively twice for me since upgrading yesterday, needs a bit more work yet it seems.
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