Notification Center
The notification center provides a comprehensive overview of various notifications from all available applications, even notifications that have been responded to or addressed. To access the notification center from your home screen, swipe down from the center of your screen; you can also access the notification from your lock screen by swiping up from the middle of your screen.
From the notification center you can clear all notifications that you have received throughout the day (Figure 1). You can tap a single notification to access it within the application that it came from, and you can tap on groups of notifications from the same application to individually interact with them. You can also swipe left on notifications if you would like to adjust the notification settings or interact with the notification; for example, you can respond directly to a text message from the notification center by swiping left and selecting view or respond (Figures 2 and 3).
You can also manage notifications from the notification center, adjusting how frequently you receive notifications, as well as temporarily or permanently muting notifications from certain applications. You can also adjust the settings for the notification style and frequency if certain notifications from the notification center.
Notification Summaries
On versions of iOS 15 and later there is also a feature called “Notification Summary” available through the notifications center, that allows you to view all received notifications for each day. Your notification summary, if enabled, will alert you each day, and is tailored to your specific app usage. This means that applications used frequently will appear larger and earlier in the summary, showing the most relevant information first. You can even adjust the time that your notification summary appears on your device.
To set up a notification summary, follow these steps:
- Open Settings, select “Notifications”
- Select “Scheduled Summary”
- Turn on the Schedule Summary by tapping the white switch
- Select “Continue” on the pop up screen, on the next screen, select that applications that you would like to include in your notification summary. To select an application, tap the black circle to the left of the application icon so that a blue check mark appears. Tap the blue “Add Apps” button at the bottom of the screen.
- On the next screen you can set up a schedule for your notification summary. You can add several summaries throughout the day, and set specific times for them to appear on your device. Once you have added and scheduled your summaries, select “turn on Notification Summary” at the bottom of your screen.
Takeaway: Notifications are completely customizable, and allow you to personalize the way you receive notifications or messages from all of your applications. You can access a complete history of your notifications through the notification center, and you can also schedule your device to present personalized notification summaries at specific times throughout the day on iOS 15 and later.