While I was brainstorming what Apple could possibly be bringing to the table in iOS 18, I got sucked into my own theory that notifications really need a major overhaul. Apple has made major strides recently with Live Activities, Time Sensitivity, and investing a lot more effort into the utility of Focuses, but their efforts have really stopped short of a real overhaul. I feel like they were really onto something with iOS 15’s Notification Summaries, but I turned the feature off after I couldn’t find myself distinguishing every app into a distinct group. I’m asking this because I have all of my settings configured like crazy, and I put a lot of thought into how I would ideally like to use each of my devices. (For example, I try to limit notifications on my phone and watch to actual humans, while I tend to allow notifications from entertainment apps on my iPad.) But, I still find myself just glazing over the sea of notifications I get when I take my phone out of sleep focus in the morning, and important notifications like my reminders are lost in a sea of Duolingo reminders and Instagram DMs. And, for those of us that aren’t as plugged in to tech culture, many people in my life just resort to just going nuclear and living in Do Not Disturb. Time and time again, my parents complain to me that they don’t get notifications anymore, just to find out that they got pissed one day and turned off an app’s notifications permissions. When I suggest them to go fine tune their focuses, they immediately get lost in the somewhat confusing and glitchy process. I care about this because I notice a lot of people around me just disconnecting, which makes communicating with them overly difficult. (For example, just a few days ago, I needed someone’s address to come pick them up, but they missed my text because they were in DND and I loathe having to go the Notify Anyway route.)
I want to throw out two ways I think Apple could really overhaul the notifications system, and see what you all think, and how you all tend to manage notifications. If anyone from Apple happens to be reading (although I doubt it), please feel free to go wild on these ideas. **I know these ideas are rough and really all over the place, but I’m really curious about how people that have been plugged into the Apple ecosystem for longer than I have think this would serve as an evolution of the way we receive information from our devices.**
Lock Screen and Notification Center
Time Sensitive and Critical Alerts are one of the best changes to iOS, iPadOS, and macOS in years. I’m safely able to go into a Focus without worrying that I might miss something important like a Calendar notification. The way they integrate with Focuses is so incredibly well thought out, and it’s something that I wholly believe that only Apple could ever manage to pull off. Apple went in the right direction here, then stopped dead in their tracks. When I first pickup my phone after being in a Focus for a bit, I might see a Time Sensitive notification or two that rightfully should command my attention first. But, as soon as I step out of that Focus to actually go catch up on Messages, all hell breaks loose.
I could choose to allow messages from all my contacts, all the time, but I know that I would get distracted by my friends when I need to be focusing. So instead, all of my friends are silenced, and they can choose to notify me anyway if they choose to. This system works, but it ends up pushing me out of my set Focus when I’m ready to reconnect. For example, if I get a text from a friend that I’m meeting up with after I park my car, I have to purposely turn off my Driving Focus to see what they said, if I want to see it on my lock screen.
I think that if Apple wants the theme of iOS 18 to be AI smarts, this is a fantastic place to start. If some language model that’s always running in the background catches that a notification might need to be prioritized, even if my friend hasn’t consciously chosen to notify me anyway, then I could get away with staying in Focus, without missing anything. Maybe if one of my frequent group chats is firing on all cylinders, I can get only the important notifications where the actual substance of the conversation is, and not 20 different variations of “[blank] liked [blank]’s message”. If I’m not actively interacting with the conversation, it might temporarily switch to only showing banners on my iPhone and Mac, instead of constantly pinging my wrist or interrupting what I’m listening to on my AirPods.
But, outside of how notifications are prioritized, I think the Notification Center needs a major overhaul in design. Notification Summaries have the right idea of showing apps as little bubbles, but they never went further than that. Instead of a list of everything at once, why not show the app icon with a short little generated text summary, since the model might be able to do that too? What I’m picturing is, if I have three Instagram DMs, where two of them are just my friends sending me a post I might like and the other is someone actively trying to have a conversation, throw those 3 different notifications into a short summary that might read, “[Friend 1] and [Friend 2] both sent you a post. [Friend 3] said, [blank].” If Duolingo sent me a practice reminder at 2:30 pm and then another at 6:00 pm, I’d be totally open to my phone deleting the first one and just delivering the latest reminder.
Enforcement and Delivery
The easiest route to instantly improve the notifications system could possibly be with how Apple enforces its rules. I know this is a hot topic because Apple has annoyed a lot of people here with the Settings app trying to upsell you with some of their own subscription services, but it’s still an important area to revisit. Live Activities have really improved this situation for myself, because two apps that I found abused notifications for marketing, DoorDash and Uber, can both can send me ride and order updates via a Live Activity, while their notification permissions stay off. Apple should take this a step further by really enforcing the existing App Store rules about not sending marketing via notifications (including for themselves‼️), while also not announcing to apps that a user has turned off notification permissions. I know some developers would throw an absolute hissy fit over losing those metrics, but if I could stop getting annoying popups to enable notifications in the scammier apps I find myself having to use, that would be a lot better for my day to day user experience.
The user should have more meaningful control over what how notifications reach their device, too. When my Dad made the jump from Android in 2020, the only feature he really misses is the ability to set a custom notification sound for each app. He prefers Gmail instead of Apple Mail, and because Google hasn’t opted to provide any custom notification sounds, important emails get lumped together with everything else that he gets. Plus, if you have an Apple Watch, every non-stock app notification is delivered with that infamous bell. I was unreasonably hyped when Apple allowed us to change the non-stock app notification sound to a custom tone, but changing this per-app would be a lot better, especially if I can choose to do it on my Watch as well.
Outside of sounds, the design of app badges needs to be rethought. First off, I noticed that some apps have the ability to place a badge on themselves persistently, even if they haven’t sent an actual notification. This needs to stop, because I’m tried of having to go nuclear and turn off offending app’s access to badges. We should also be able to change the red color to something else, having the added bonus as fending off the point that moral panickers use as proof that Apple has supposedly purposely designed the iPhone to be as attention-sucking as possible.
While making the management of notifications more complicated than ever would go against the ethos I established in the first part, the option should be there for users that want it and are willing to dig for it.
I want to throw out two ways I think Apple could really overhaul the notifications system, and see what you all think, and how you all tend to manage notifications. If anyone from Apple happens to be reading (although I doubt it), please feel free to go wild on these ideas. **I know these ideas are rough and really all over the place, but I’m really curious about how people that have been plugged into the Apple ecosystem for longer than I have think this would serve as an evolution of the way we receive information from our devices.**
Lock Screen and Notification Center
Time Sensitive and Critical Alerts are one of the best changes to iOS, iPadOS, and macOS in years. I’m safely able to go into a Focus without worrying that I might miss something important like a Calendar notification. The way they integrate with Focuses is so incredibly well thought out, and it’s something that I wholly believe that only Apple could ever manage to pull off. Apple went in the right direction here, then stopped dead in their tracks. When I first pickup my phone after being in a Focus for a bit, I might see a Time Sensitive notification or two that rightfully should command my attention first. But, as soon as I step out of that Focus to actually go catch up on Messages, all hell breaks loose.
I could choose to allow messages from all my contacts, all the time, but I know that I would get distracted by my friends when I need to be focusing. So instead, all of my friends are silenced, and they can choose to notify me anyway if they choose to. This system works, but it ends up pushing me out of my set Focus when I’m ready to reconnect. For example, if I get a text from a friend that I’m meeting up with after I park my car, I have to purposely turn off my Driving Focus to see what they said, if I want to see it on my lock screen.
I think that if Apple wants the theme of iOS 18 to be AI smarts, this is a fantastic place to start. If some language model that’s always running in the background catches that a notification might need to be prioritized, even if my friend hasn’t consciously chosen to notify me anyway, then I could get away with staying in Focus, without missing anything. Maybe if one of my frequent group chats is firing on all cylinders, I can get only the important notifications where the actual substance of the conversation is, and not 20 different variations of “[blank] liked [blank]’s message”. If I’m not actively interacting with the conversation, it might temporarily switch to only showing banners on my iPhone and Mac, instead of constantly pinging my wrist or interrupting what I’m listening to on my AirPods.
But, outside of how notifications are prioritized, I think the Notification Center needs a major overhaul in design. Notification Summaries have the right idea of showing apps as little bubbles, but they never went further than that. Instead of a list of everything at once, why not show the app icon with a short little generated text summary, since the model might be able to do that too? What I’m picturing is, if I have three Instagram DMs, where two of them are just my friends sending me a post I might like and the other is someone actively trying to have a conversation, throw those 3 different notifications into a short summary that might read, “[Friend 1] and [Friend 2] both sent you a post. [Friend 3] said, [blank].” If Duolingo sent me a practice reminder at 2:30 pm and then another at 6:00 pm, I’d be totally open to my phone deleting the first one and just delivering the latest reminder.
Enforcement and Delivery
The easiest route to instantly improve the notifications system could possibly be with how Apple enforces its rules. I know this is a hot topic because Apple has annoyed a lot of people here with the Settings app trying to upsell you with some of their own subscription services, but it’s still an important area to revisit. Live Activities have really improved this situation for myself, because two apps that I found abused notifications for marketing, DoorDash and Uber, can both can send me ride and order updates via a Live Activity, while their notification permissions stay off. Apple should take this a step further by really enforcing the existing App Store rules about not sending marketing via notifications (including for themselves‼️), while also not announcing to apps that a user has turned off notification permissions. I know some developers would throw an absolute hissy fit over losing those metrics, but if I could stop getting annoying popups to enable notifications in the scammier apps I find myself having to use, that would be a lot better for my day to day user experience.
The user should have more meaningful control over what how notifications reach their device, too. When my Dad made the jump from Android in 2020, the only feature he really misses is the ability to set a custom notification sound for each app. He prefers Gmail instead of Apple Mail, and because Google hasn’t opted to provide any custom notification sounds, important emails get lumped together with everything else that he gets. Plus, if you have an Apple Watch, every non-stock app notification is delivered with that infamous bell. I was unreasonably hyped when Apple allowed us to change the non-stock app notification sound to a custom tone, but changing this per-app would be a lot better, especially if I can choose to do it on my Watch as well.
Outside of sounds, the design of app badges needs to be rethought. First off, I noticed that some apps have the ability to place a badge on themselves persistently, even if they haven’t sent an actual notification. This needs to stop, because I’m tried of having to go nuclear and turn off offending app’s access to badges. We should also be able to change the red color to something else, having the added bonus as fending off the point that moral panickers use as proof that Apple has supposedly purposely designed the iPhone to be as attention-sucking as possible.
While making the management of notifications more complicated than ever would go against the ethos I established in the first part, the option should be there for users that want it and are willing to dig for it.
