Notifications

Previews of incoming text messages appear as banners or alerts on your home screen by default. This can be handy if you want to quickly decide if you want to reply to a message now or if you want to wait and reply later. But it can also be a pain if your mom, or your boss, catches sight of a message you'd rather they hadn't. And we all have that one friend or coworker who thinks nothing of grabbing your phone to check out the notifications on your home screen. Luckily, within your Settings app, there’s an easy way to disable text messages from being displayed on your Home screen while still receiving notifications. Here’s how to keep your messages private.

This year at the World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC) Apple announced some significant changes to the way the iPhone will behave while its user is driving. The new Car Safety features in iOS 11 arrive in response to increased pressure from the National Highway Safety Traffic Administration, which has urged Apple and other cellphone manufacturers to develop safeguards to reduce death and injury attributed to distracted driving. Distracted driving has been an issue in at least some capacity for over 20 years without much response at the developer level. Distraction related accidents, whether involving gadgets or otherwise, killed nearly 3,500 people in 2015, according to the National Highway Safety Traffic Administration, with 391,000 lesser injuries.

Sometimes, I think Apple Pay works too well. Never have I been more able to impulse buy things. But if you’re not sure where your money is going, you can check the history of your Apple Pay purchases for each credit card you have set up. When you make a purchase, Apple Pay will notify you of recent activity on any of the cards set up for Apple Pay. But you may want to see a list of recent transactions, which you can view in the Wallet app. Here’s how to view recent credit card activity for Apple Pay on iPhone.

One of the Apple Watch's many benefits is the ability to manage incoming messages and notifications from your wrist. But if you've let the notifications pile up, don't worry about going through and dismissing them one by one; there's an easy way to dismiss all your notifications at once. When your Apple Watch notifications start to pile up, here’s how to clear all of them at once.

I don’t know how or why it started, I just want it to stop. The past couple months, I’ve started to receive notifications about random friends’ activity on Facebook. It says something like, “Brenda posted a picture,” to which I’m scratching my head wondering, “and why do I care what Brenda who I knew in 5th grade and haven’t seen since did?” Apparently, I’m not the only one suddenly receiving notifications from random friends. So let’s figure out how to stop this! Here’s how to stop receiving notifications from random friends on Facebook.

Folders are a great way to organize your apps, especially if your apps are beginning to pile up. Lots of apps use notification badges to let you know there’s a task to complete within the app or new content to check. But when those apps are in a folder, the notifications badges are added together to give you one number in a red circle. However, you can 3D Touch a folder to see what specific apps have unchecked notifications. Here’s how to 3D Touch a folder to see app notification badges.

If you don’t want constant notifications from Facebook or a guilty pleasure game (cough, cough, Candy Crush), there are two ways to adjust the settings for your app notifications. The first way is to access the app’s settings. The second way is through the notification settings on your device. These notifications are called push notifications because your iPhone alerts you of the notification even if you aren’t using the app. You can selectively choose which apps are allowed to send you notifications and which apps can wait until you have time to check them. Here’s how to turn off push notifications for a particular app on iPhone.

The News app on iPhone allows you to keep up to date on all the topics and publications that interest you. You can also sign up for breaking news alerts on your iPhone, which appear as notifications. You can choose which news sources are allowed to send you breaking news alerts. You can turn on notifications for publications you follow or other large well-known channels that often cover breaking news. If you don’t have a favorite source of news, you can turn on News Top Stories as a means of getting breaking news from a wide net of journalists. Here’s how to turn on breaking news alerts in Apple News on iPhone.

On Apple Watch, you can clear all notifications by using Force Touch. Now you can do the same on iPhone with 3D Touch. Deleting individual notifications isn’t worth the time, but being able to clear them all can be extremely helpful when keeping up to date with your network and to dos. This great shortcut was introduced with iOS 10; it should work on any iPhone model with 3D Touch running that operating system or later. Here’s how to clear all notifications with 3D Touch on iPhone.

The times they are a changin’ with iOS 10. If you want to reply to notifications from Lock screen on your 3D Touch compatible iPhone, you’ll need to use 3D Touch. Older models have the good ‘ol swipe to Reply feature in place, which we’ll also go over. However rich notifications from Lock screen in iOS 10 allows you to do a lot more. The notification on your Lock screen can easily be responded to using either 3D Touch or by swiping left. This is one of the ways Apple is incorporating 3D Touch into more and more places on the iPhone. Here’s how to respond to notifications in iOS 10.

I’m sure you’ve noticed that your Messages alerts sound twice: once when you get the message, and again two minutes later. If this isn’t your cup of tea, there’s an easy way to change it. Repeat Alerts can be found, and changed, in the Settings app. You can choose to set repeat message alerts from Never all the way up to 10 times. It’s good to know that all alerts repeat in two-minute intervals. Here’s how to turn off repeat message notifications.

I don’t know about you, but Low Power Mode is my absolute favorite feature that came with iOS 9. I don’t just turn it on when my battery is low; I keep it on the vast majority of the time, because I have yet to notice an experiential difference in my iPhone’s performance or capabilities when it’s on. However, whenever I go to charge my phone, eventually it’s charged enough for Low Power Mode to turn itself off. Luckily, you can easily re-enable Low Power Mode from your Lock screen. Here’s how.

Touch ID has seen some major improvements since the release of the iPhone 6s. It’s more accurate and works much more often than it used to. But now, I find Touch ID unlocks my iPhone before I have a chance to check the notification that has popped up. Or, if I’m driving and I just want to change the song from the Lock screen, sometimes Touch ID works too quickly and I end up unlocking my iPhone and having to take the extra step of opening the Music app. Well, here’s our trick to get around that.

Sometimes, you just don’t have time to answer the phone. Especially if you’re driving, it’s often safer to quickly pull over and send an iPhone automated message to let the person know you’ll call them back later. This function is accessible right from the call screen with different messages prepared for quick sending. Here’s how to answer a call with a text message if you happen to be busy.

iPhone reminders are an easy way to keep your life on schedule. You can set them via the Reminders app or simply tell Siri when and what you need to be reminded of. However, I don't use the reminders app very often; therefore, it's buried in a folder on my third Home Screen and is annoying to access. But, did you know that you don't have to unlock your phone to mark a reminder as complete? You can even Snooze the reminder from Lock Screen as though it were any other alarm. Once you've set a reminder in the native app, the reminder will be set to go off. Here's how to mark it complete from Lock Screen. 

Sometimes particular conversations or individuals can become a bit of a nuisance in Messages — so much so that you'd like to stop receiving notifications for that conversation. Maybe you are part of a group conversation run amok or a family member likes to text you during work hours? Fortunately, you can turn on Do Not Disturb for any particular conversation.

With iOS 9, you have the option to sort pull-down notifications. This allows you to group or ungroup apps and view notifications sorted manually or by most recent. When you group apps, they’re sorted into blocks under notifications with the most recent app appearing at the top. When apps are ungrouped, notifications will sort intermixed by most recent unless sorted manually.

Not all emails are created equal. Between spam and miscellaneous messages, there are a lot of emails we get notifications for that don't need to be checked right away. On the other hand, there are business emails and notes from family members we may want to reply to immediately. By turning on email notifications for only your VIP Mailbox in the Mail app, you'll receive fewer non-urgent notifications. Or, you can set a separate notification sound for your VIPs to differentiate between the two.

It’s easy to miss appointments when our calendars are always full, and pasting sticky notes to computer screens just doesn’t cut it anymore. However, your phone is happy to do the thinking for you; change the Default Alert Time and your Calendar app will remind you. 

Siri is an awesome time saver. Want to view your most recent calls, text someone, get directions, or post to Facebook? Just ask Siri. You can even do all this from your lock screen. The problem is, so can anyone else. If your settings allow for it, anyone can access your call history, send a tweet, or get directions to a contact's home from your lock screen just by bringing up Siri and asking.