Overwhelmed by constant notifications? Starting with iOS and iPadOS 15, your iPhone and iPad offer a notification summary feature, which allows you to configure notifications to appear at times scheduled in a “abstract” rather than immediately when they happen.
Equivalent to the Focus function, notification summary helps you avoid unwanted distractions. If you skipped the initial setting of the feature or want to change it later, here we show you how to do it.
RELATED: How to set up Focus on iPhone and iPad
Finding and Adding Notification Summaries
To start, you will need to open the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad. Once there, scroll down and tap Notifications.
At the top of the page, you will see an option named “Scheduled summary”. You can list a couple of scheduled hours, but don't worry if it doesn't. Just tap on “Scheduled summary” and you can configure some.
The first option you see enables or disables the feature. If you want to use the “Scheduled summary”, make sure the switch is green. Below that, should see your schedule. List the times when iOS will show you a notification summary.
The first summary is probably scheduled for the 8 a. M. Another summary is likely to be scheduled for 6 pm. You can add as many additional summary times as you like. As an example, in our tests, we configure summaries of our notifications to appear at 8 a. M., At 2 p. M., At 7 p. M. And to the 10 p. M.
Activate the Show next summary option
Next, you will see an option named “Show next summary”. If you activate this option, your next Notification Summary will appear in the Notification Center even before the scheduled time.
The next summary will look like this and you can tap on it to see all your app's scheduled notifications.
How to select which applications to include in the notification summary
Below, you can configure which applications will be included in each summary.
Unfortunately, you cannot configure an app to display exclusively on specific summaries. All you can do is configure the app to be included in all summaries or not.
Note: Notification Summary by default only retains what Apple considers non-urgent notifications for summaries. As an example, iOS considers incoming phone calls and text messages urgent. You will continue to get them immediately, unless you specifically tell iOS to save them for later. More on that below.
In this list of applications, you will see an average of how many notifications each app shows per day. As you can see, most of the notifications in the example below come from email.
This is where you can even change your phone notifications and messages to scheduled instead of immediate.. If you need to change an application from immediate notifications to scheduled, just set the toggle switch to green
iOS will probably ask you to make sure that this is truly what you want. After changing the messages to be scheduled, as an example, iOS prompts you to leave the app set for immediate notifications or to switch them to scheduled.
If you prefer to see the list organized alphabetically, all you have to do is tap the tab from A to Z.
Setting time-sensitive notifications to show immediately
If you return to the main Notifications settings panel, can go even deeper. You will also find another way to configure specific applications to send your notifications immediately. Scroll down until you see the particular app you want to configure.
Some notifications are more urgent than others. You can tell your iPhone or iPad to go ahead and deliver them right away, instead of waiting for the next notification summary.
Tap on the app you want to change and you will see a new set of alternatives. On “Delivery of notifications”, you can change whether app notifications appear immediately or are included in a Notification Summary. Even better, you can tell your device to broadcast those urgent notifications right away with the touch of a button.
Below is the option “Always deliver immediately”. Here, you can tell iOS to show you those urgent notifications right away. With that activated, important notifications will appear on your lock screen immediately. These notifications will stay on your lock screen for an hour or until you dismiss them.
Another useful feature that came with iOS 15 you may be interested in is the built-in two-factor authenticator.
