What iOS 12 'critical alerts' are, and how to turn them on
Many of iOS 12's notification features are intended to remove distractions, but "critical alerts" are meant to do the opposite. Apple hasn't said much about them -- so what are they, and how do they work?
On a basic level, critical alerts appear regardless of what you're doing in iOS or what other notification settings you might have enabled. They ignore Do Not Disturb mode, and even ringer settings, so you can't accidentally mute them.
As you might imagine though these could be abused by unscrupulous developers, so they're opt-in only and developers have to seek approval from Apple. The company vets notifications so that only ones related to health, public safety, and home security are supported. One example it offers is a glucose monitoring app, which might push out a warning that your blood sugar is too low.
Typically an app that supports critical alerts will trigger a pop-up asking you to allow them, much like the messages that ask for access to contacts or the camera.
Chances are that will be the extent of your interaction, but you can flip alerts off and on at will. Open the Settings app, select Notifications, and then scroll down until you find the app in question. If it supports the feature, you'll see a special Allow Critical Alerts toggle at the top of the app's notification dashboard.
On a basic level, critical alerts appear regardless of what you're doing in iOS or what other notification settings you might have enabled. They ignore Do Not Disturb mode, and even ringer settings, so you can't accidentally mute them.
As you might imagine though these could be abused by unscrupulous developers, so they're opt-in only and developers have to seek approval from Apple. The company vets notifications so that only ones related to health, public safety, and home security are supported. One example it offers is a glucose monitoring app, which might push out a warning that your blood sugar is too low.
Typically an app that supports critical alerts will trigger a pop-up asking you to allow them, much like the messages that ask for access to contacts or the camera.
Chances are that will be the extent of your interaction, but you can flip alerts off and on at will. Open the Settings app, select Notifications, and then scroll down until you find the app in question. If it supports the feature, you'll see a special Allow Critical Alerts toggle at the top of the app's notification dashboard.
Comments
That iPhone X before iOS12 did not have a visible indicator that DND was on, was terribly annoying.. I missed a great deal of phone calls and timely messages just because I forgot that it was on..
Besides, you can swipe the notification away like all others..
It seems to have stemmed from an email address change I did several years ago that didn't 'take' everywhere within the OS. (i.e.: Apple didn't have ONE core spot where the Apple ID was entered, so different Apple services requested it.) Aside from this kind of things being a security issue (e.g. training users to be phished), it is incredibly annoying. There should be one spot in settings where one enters their Apple ID, and then any kind of dialogs should reference people back to that spot.
It's just poor design, combined with some kind of long-standing bug.
Yeah, agree there. An indicator is good.
But if things pop up in the middle of doing other things, that's pretty bad... unless of course, they are truly critical (unlike the Apple ID popup I noted above).
If I'm playing a game, or recording a tutorial of some app, etc. I don't want the OS or apps popping up stuff unless I'm dying or I'm given some fairly fine control over what things I want to interrupt.
LOL, no doubt. But, I think true Dimension B people have become so warped in thinking that they can't even imagine getting anything good or accurate from a government controlled by a supposed dictator.
Did the most recent test have a different sound from Amber Alerts and local emergency alerts at least? Because when everyone's phone goes off with that sound, the few seconds before we figure out if it's a missing kid or a flurry of nukes is going to eventually give me a heart attack.