Published on January 3, 2022, 09:18
Apple's iOS 15 brought a number of changes to how notifications work, allowing iPhone users to prioritize important alerts and making less important notifications less intrusive. They're definitely less intrusive: For the past few months, I've struggled with my iPhone settings to see when my friends message me on WhatsApp, Signal, Instagram, and other apps. In an extreme case, a friend messaged me on Signal on a Friday, and I didn't notice his text until Monday, when I opened the app — thankfully, there was nothing urgent. , but I was embarrassed.
I'm not the only one frustrated. Many threads on Reddit are focused on the return of notifications, whether it's because of changes in how notifications behave when Do Not Disturb is on, how notifications don't appear unless you proactively enter an app and people who have such a hard time with iOS 15's Focus feature that they find it easier to use apps with similar notification controls.
iOS 15's Focus might need some tweaking
iOS 15's Focus Mode is supposed to be an evolution of Do Not Disturb. Along with letting users select Do Not Disturb mode, which lets you silence notifications until it's turned off, it lets you create more personalized situational profiles based on your needs. This may interest you: PDF document on an iPhone: how to create a signature?. For example, I recently created a "Movies" profile which when enabled disables notifications from all apps, phone calls and texts except the RunPee app which is a timer which sends a notification at the best times to leave a movie theater to take a restroom break.
Focus, while well-meaning, does allow you to accidentally leave your phone in a state where it doesn't receive notifications. Focus can also be enabled to run on your various Apple devices, making it either handy for silencing notifications as needed, or a liability if you only want to silence your phone but leave your iPad and Mac computers alone.
Accessing Focus to turn it on or off is fairly easy: you open Control Center by swiping down from the top right corner of an iPhone with Face ID or from the bottom of an iPhone equipped with a home button. This should be a good starting point to determine if Focus is the problem.
Related to this article:Tesla price: How much does a Tesla cost? The different prices per modelIf the issues appear to be with the focus settings themselves, you'll need to go to the Settings app on the iPhone, scroll down to Focus, and enter the menu for the specific focus that you have to settle. For example, I noticed that the sleep timer that starts kicking in around 10:50 p.m. made me miss texts and video calls from friends I like to talk to before bed, but I didn't want to. not leaving my phone open for someone to call this late at night. I've adjusted the "Sleep" setting to allow calls from specific people who can reach me after this time. It's not elegant because now this little list could potentially decide to wake me up with calls at 3am, but for now it's the best system for me.
The way your notifications are delivered may also have changed depending on your Focus settings. Instead of receiving notifications individually, your Focus can collect them in a summary. You can change how this summary works by going to Settings, Notifications and tapping Scheduled Summary to make changes or disable the feature.
Notifications that are hidden may be collected for summary, depending on your settings.
Changes to the Do Not Disturb schedule may interfere with the use of your phone.
Do Not Disturb is now part of Focus, but it has a key tweak that seems to disrupt the way some people previously used their phones. Prior to iOS 15, when Do Not Disturb was enabled, the iPhone would not immediately ring and show notifications when the phone was locked and the screen was turned off. See the article: Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro review: The best Android GPU scores!. However, notifications would show up if you were actively using the phone while it was in do not disturb mode.
The solution isn't quite there yet. As in the previous example, where I adjusted the settings for an individual Focus, you can adjust the behavior of the Do Not Disturb Focus. In addition to selecting who can ring your phone, you can choose specific apps that are allowed to notify you when you have Do Not Disturb turned on. However, the apps you choose will notify your phone anytime Do Not Disturb is on, whether your phone screen is on or off.
If this bothers you, you are not alone. A fairly active Reddit thread on r/iOS communicated exactly about this issue and shared workaround tips until something official is released at a later date.
Related to this article: Comparison of the best laptops for graphic designers: Top 10 PCs for web designersA strange solution to retrieve notifications
During my own run-ins with various Reddits and Apple support pages to get my notifications working for WhatsApp, Signal, and Instagram, I found an odd solution that at least worked for me. Related: No-log VPNs in 2021: Best for Staying Anonymous Online.
In Apple's support forums, someone found that turning the "Announce Notifications" feature on and off could possibly fix your phone's notifications. To access it, go to Settings, then Notifications, then Siri, and finally activate the Announce notifications function. This feature normally allows Siri to read your notifications out loud, such as when you're driving. But instead of leaving it on, quit the Settings app, then come back and turn it off.
Somehow, when I do these steps, the apps that don't notify me resume. Doesn't make sense, but I've now performed these steps twice when I noticed the problem had returned, and it fixed it each time.
I will continue to update this article as I find other solutions to recover notifications in iOS 15. If you have found roadblocks that prevented you from receiving notifications or solutions to recover them, feel free to write them in the comments.