Notifications can turn into a blessing or a real nightmare. All the applications that you install already ask your permission to send you notifications, and the problem is that many of these applications use push notifications to make you "spam" about their own services when you do not enter the application in a certain amount of time.
We show you how you can customize the notification settings in iOS 15 to get the most out of it and only receive alerts about what interests you. This is the definitive guide on notifications in iOS 15 that you should not miss, say goodbye to the hassles and take control of your iPhone.
The types of notifications in iOS 15
Fundamentally in iOS 15 we have three types of notifications that will be shown to us on the screen depending on the permissions granted:
- On locked screen: These are the notifications that are shown on the iPhone's lock screen and that will allow us to interact with them by tapping on them, once it is unlocked, it will take us directly to the application and we will even see a preview of it.
- In the Notification Center: If you slide the left area of the screen from top to bottom, the Notification Center will open where you will have an ordered summary of them.
- In strips: These are notifications that appear as a pop-up from the top of the screen while we are using the iPhone / iPad to warn us that we have received something.
En Settings> Notifications we will be able to enter each application and decide how we want its notifications to be displayed based on the type of notification that is displayed on the screen. This will be to our pleasure and is as simple as selecting one, two or all three options. It is important because you may not need the bank application to show strips that interrupt you while you work with the iPhone, but you do want to have this notification in the Notification Center.
Customize the rest of the notification functions
Following the same route for notification settings mentioned above, we can also make a series of adjustments that, application by application, can make our user experience more personalized and help us both to optimize the content displayed on the screen and to make the most of the time that these notifications make us lose, let's talk about all the functions that appear in this section and what each one is for:
- Strip Style: If we have activated the type of notification by means of strips, we will be able to adjust if we want the strip to be shown only temporarily, or if we want it to remain permanently on the screen until we press on it or reject it. For example, calls appear as permanent strips, and a WhatsApp notification as temporary strip, but you can decide to your liking and win.
- Sounds: We can activate or deactivate the fact that a sound is offered when we receive a notification from this specific application, it is like specifically silencing it.
- Balloons: The famous iOS notification balloons, something that the vast majority of Android customization layers have inherited. In this way, both in the SpringBoard and in the Applications Drawer, we will be shown a red dot with a number that will inform us of the number of pending notifications we have. In WhatsApp for example, this red balloon informs us of how many messages we have unread, as in the Mail application.
In addition to these parameters mentioned above, we have a series of possibilities when it comes to ordering the notifications that, if we adjust properly, can save us a lot of time when consulting them.
- Important notifications: Not all applications offer us this option, but more and more are being added. If you activate the important notifications they will always be shown, even if we have activated any of the anti-nuisance or concentration modes that iOS has. For this reason, we recommend that you only use this functionality in applications that you are clear about are intended to offer you important information.
- Group notifications: This function is ideal for messaging applications for example, and it is that it will allow iOS itself to decide how the notifications of the same application are displayed, offering us the possibility of grouping all the notifications in a single one that is drop-down and what shows everything much more content. I recommend that you use the option to group notifications for instant messaging applications.
Quick interaction with applications
As you well know, although many users have not yet fully internalized this, if you long press (hard press for users of devices with a 3D Touch system such as the iPhone X) you can open a pop-up that allows you to interact directly with the application. This will depend a lot on the specific application in terms of the functions allowed.
While in WhatsApp it allows us to respond quickly to the message by opening a text box, in the Mail application, in addition to responding, we can even send the received mail directly to the trash. The possibilities are almost endless, but as we have said before, this will depend a lot on each of the specific applications.
Notifications summary and preview
First of all, Apple has launched with iOS 15 the possibility of set a summary of notifications, this feature available in Settings> Notifications, allows us to choose at what times we want to receive summaries of our notifications. For example, if you do not want to be continuously disturbed, you can set that during work hours you only receive notification summaries every certain hours. This does not affect, of course, phone calls or messages, which will enter you as usual.
It is also important for our privacy control the preview of applications, especially from the bank, messages and eMail. Within the notifications section we have three options:
- Show preview of notifications always (will show text content).
- If it's unlocked
- Never (the text "notification" will be displayed).
Along the same lines, we can also adjust the what to do with notifications while sharing screen in a FaceTime or Zoom call for example, we can allow or block notifications while we have a call, by default they will not be displayed.