I've been receiving ghost notifications for the past three or four weeks, but I can't seem to track down where they're coming from. I initially thought it was a bug in iOS 18.6.2 that would somehow fix itself with the release of iOS 18.7, but it didn't.
I get them 5–6 times a day, and they're driving me insane! I just hear the notification tone, but there's nothing in my notifications. The screen doesn't even wake up from AOD when this happens. The tone comes from the default alerts grouping under Sounds & Haptics. Previously, only health and fitness apps used to send notifications with this tone. Disabling notifications from these apps has had no effect. I have even tried tracking down the app from the notification count in Screen Time, but the count doesn't increase after I hear the tone.
I've tried force restarting and contacting Apple Support, but they were utterly useless and only recommended checking if the VPN was on and "reset all settings". This had nothing to do with notifications and ended up causing me other problems. They then asked me to call support again to speak to the 'senior team', but the only recommendation they made was to upgrade to iOS 26.
I've been using the temporary fix of just setting the tone and haptics to 'none' for default alerts for now.
This has been extremely frustrating, and I'm seriously considering switching back to Pixel. I hope someone here has a solution.
Also, apps seem to freeze after I wake the phone up again, ever since I "reset all settings", and the iPhone feedback on the Apple website has no iOS 18.7 in the 'What version of iOS are you using?' drop-down menu.
TL;DR: Been haunted by ghost notification tones (5-6x/day, default alert sound, no visuals or Screen Time hits) for 3-4 weeks on iOS 18.6.2–18.7; Apple Support's BS fixes (VPN check, settings reset that broke apps, "upgrade to iOS 26") flopped hard; muting defaults as temp band-aid, but freezing issues linger and feedback form won't list 18.7—seriously eyeing a Pixel switch.
I get them 5–6 times a day, and they're driving me insane! I just hear the notification tone, but there's nothing in my notifications. The screen doesn't even wake up from AOD when this happens. The tone comes from the default alerts grouping under Sounds & Haptics. Previously, only health and fitness apps used to send notifications with this tone. Disabling notifications from these apps has had no effect. I have even tried tracking down the app from the notification count in Screen Time, but the count doesn't increase after I hear the tone.
I've tried force restarting and contacting Apple Support, but they were utterly useless and only recommended checking if the VPN was on and "reset all settings". This had nothing to do with notifications and ended up causing me other problems. They then asked me to call support again to speak to the 'senior team', but the only recommendation they made was to upgrade to iOS 26.
I've been using the temporary fix of just setting the tone and haptics to 'none' for default alerts for now.
This has been extremely frustrating, and I'm seriously considering switching back to Pixel. I hope someone here has a solution.
Also, apps seem to freeze after I wake the phone up again, ever since I "reset all settings", and the iPhone feedback on the Apple website has no iOS 18.7 in the 'What version of iOS are you using?' drop-down menu.
TL;DR: Been haunted by ghost notification tones (5-6x/day, default alert sound, no visuals or Screen Time hits) for 3-4 weeks on iOS 18.6.2–18.7; Apple Support's BS fixes (VPN check, settings reset that broke apps, "upgrade to iOS 26") flopped hard; muting defaults as temp band-aid, but freezing issues linger and feedback form won't list 18.7—seriously eyeing a Pixel switch.
