Notifications come in several different “styles” on iPhones, and these styles refer to whether the notification appears on either your locked and unlocked screens. These styles can be customized in the settings of your device, and can be adjusted by application; meaning you can change the way notifications appear for each specific application, rather than all notifications that appear on your device.
To adjust any available settings for notification styles, open settings, select “Notifications” and on the next screen select the application whose settings you would like to change. If you do not want to receive notifications for an application at all, you can also turn off notifications by toggling the switch at the top of the screen into the off position.
You can then select if you would like to enable time sensitive notifications. If this feature is enabled, your device will automatically register whether a notification is time sensitive, and if it is, the notification will remain on your lock screen for an hour, and will be delivered immediately, even if you have your notifications turned off or your device on Do Not Disturb.
When you adjust your notification styles for a specific application you are presented with several options, you can first set whether notifications for the application appear on your lock screen, notification center, or on your unlocked screen in the form of a drop down banner. To turn off notifications in any of these locations, uncheck the blue circle beneath the labeled section.
You can then adjust the banner style for notifications on your unlocked screen to be either persistent or temporary, and you can also choose whether a sound will play for that application’s notification if your ringer is on.
You can also adjust the lock screen appearance of an application’s notifications. You can decide if you would like to be able to preview the contents of the notification while the device is locked, unlocked, or to never show the preview, which requires you open the application in order to access the content of the message. You can select which lock screen appearance you would like by tapping on the “Show Previews” tab at the bottom of the screen, and selecting your desired style so that a blue check mark appears next to it.
In addition to the preview settings, you can decide how you would like your notifications to be grouped: automatic, by app, or not at all. If you group notifications automatically, they will appear in relation to a thread or response, if you group them by application type they will appear based on which application they are coming from, and if you turn off notification grouping all of your notifications will appear separately. You can select which lock screen appearance you would like by tapping on the “Notification Grouping” tab at the bottom of the screen, and selecting your desired style so that a blue check mark appears next to it.
Takeaway: You can adjust and change the way notifications for each of your applications appear on your device through the “Notifications” section of your settings.