Apple iOS 15 preview Earlier this week, we took a look at a major new feature coming to iPhone notifications: Help. Some new devices can act as lifesavers for those of us, even eyes in a sea of notifications every day, regulating which apps and people can bother us and when. But on the other hand, app developers also get some extra tools to get their attention and can start publishing. More Notifications, albeit in a less annoying way.
First, the good news: the new notification features in iOS 15 look really good and useful. There’s a new feature called Focus that lets you choose which people and apps you want to see notifications from at any given time. It’s like Do Not Disturb, but with a lot more customization than just turning off all possible interruptions. You can set work modes, sleep, personal time, and other scenarios, such as workouts.
When you set up a new focus mode, Siri can scan your outgoing calls and messages and automatically suggest that you allow notifications from the people you talk to most often. Here’s a cool trick too: the connections of the people you approve of can come from other apps, like Facebook Messenger, not just from iMessage or text messages. When you get this message from Facebook Messenger on iOS 15, you might see prompts to associate that person in this app with a matching person on your contact list as well. Once you do this, that person’s communications in a third-party app may interrupt your focus mode, as long as you agree to do so.
You will also have the option to configure Some kind of distant message When you use Focus mode, others know that you are temporarily unavailable when they send you an iMessage. When your boyfriend doesn’t get a reply from you for hours, he won’t have to guess if you hate him or if you’re really busy with work, which is great for everyone. iOS 15 also adds notification summaries, which will group the lower priority notifications into the summaries that you will receive at certain times of the day.
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All of this gives you more control over interruptions, which is great! But what about app developers who want you to participate on their platform? They also have new options. They can now use one of four types of notification interruptions, two of which are new to iOS 15. First, passive interruptions, a new, less annoying notification type available to developers that doesn’t wake up the screen or make your phone vibrate. . – go directly to your Notification Center. Previous versions of iOS allowed the user to configure notifications from certain applications to be delivered silently, but this new framework allows the application developer to choose to deliver them this way.
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These are the types of notifications that are likely to end in summaries if you enable this feature. They also don’t appear in chronological order in the summary score – machine learning helps sort them by priority. It will likely include images and other visuals as well, as Apple encourages developers to include media as part of the notification to increase your chances of appearing at the top of the summary list. And since the risk of annoying you is lower, the developers have some incentive to send you more frequent and engaging notifications. They will be less annoying, but these are the types of notifications that we will probably see the most in iOS 15.
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The other new type of outage is “time sensitive”, which is a kind of additional notification. It acts like a standard notification, lights up the screen and plays a sound or vibrates, but with one important difference: it is allowed to hack into focus mode settings and notify you even if you are not from an “approved” app. The user can activate and deactivate the option to see urgent notifications, so if you really don’t want to see them, it is not necessary. Although, in theory, it should be for really urgent events, like delivering a package or your credit card company making sure you bought two round-trip tickets to Maui.
theoretically. Apple allows developers to decide which notifications deserve an urgent designation, so they are more or less on the honor system. The company urges them to maintain trust and keep in mind that users can turn off their app’s notifications if they feel like they are being unnecessarily disturbed. And so that we do not forget, Apple itself has The rules are bent by On what is considered too intrusive for the notice. Could developers end up abusing rush notifications? Perhaps, but they probably won’t benefit much from doing so, as users can opt out and may decide to silence the app entirely.
There are a few other things to keep in mind about notifications in iOS 15:
- With compatible audio devices like AirPods, Siri will be able to read any incoming notification for you. Previously, this functionality was limited to things like incoming messages. By default, Siri will read the content of urgent messages and notifications.
- Notifications with a “critical” interruption type are essentially unchanged: they are things like amber alerts, which override the ringer settings to play a sound and get your attention. App developers still need special permission for these notifications, so we shouldn’t suddenly start seeing more of them in iOS 15.
- Notifications will look a bit different, with larger app icons and contact images embedded in Messages. Actions you can take on a notification (like a photo, etc.) will also get graphical icons.
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