Notifications help to keep you updated instantly without opening the apps. However, receiving too many notifications can be annoying as they easily distract your work and wake up the iPhone frequently. Since notifications may pop up suddenly, you will end up navigating to another app if you accidentally touch them. If you are frustrated, here is how to manage notifications in iPhone.
Completely Disable Notifications
Unlike Android phones, you do not have any option in iPhone to completely disable all notifications. However, you can use the “Focus” mode to avoid distractions for a period and also from specific contacts.
- Open “Settings” app and tap on “Focus” option.
- Select “Do Not Disturb”, “Personal” or “Sleep” mode.
- By default, “People” and “Apps” are set as “None Allowed” to block all calls and notifications. Tap on “Options” showing below “People” and “Apps” section.
- Turn off “Show On Lock Screen” and turn on “Hide Notification Badges” settings under “Silenced Notifications” section.
- Also, selected “Always” for “Silence Notifications” option.
Now, you can schedule the “Focus” mode to start using the iPhone without any distraction. The problem in using “Focus” mode is that it will also disable all incoming calls along with muting notifications. If you only want to disable notifications without affecting the calls, tap on “People” and then “Allow Calls From” option. Select “Everybody” to receive calls from anyone. Otherwise, choose “Allowed People Only”, “Favorites” or “Contacts Only” to restrict incoming calls.
Disable Notifications from a Specific App
Instead of using “Focus” mode, you can also handle notifications per app basis in iPhone. This is an ideal option when you receive too many alerts from Messages, social or news app.
- Open “Settings” app and go to “Notifications” section.
- Scroll down and open the app that you want to disable notifications (for example – Facebook).
- Turn off “Allow Notifications” to disable all notifications from the app.
- Alternatively, you can customize the options to only turn off sensitive notifications, change alert style, disable Siri announcements, sound and badges and disable preview in lock screen.
Some apps like Facebook also offers additional settings to mute push notifications while that feature is not commonly available on many other apps.
Setup Notifications Schedule
Instead of disabling notifications for an app or using “Focus” mode, there is also an option in iPhone to schedule notifications as a summary. In this way, you can set a time when you are free to check all notifications instead of they pop-up every now and then.
- Open “Settings” app and navigate to “Notifications” section.
- Tap on “Scheduled Summary” option.
- On the next screen, turn on “Scheduled Summary”.
- Under “Schedule” section, set the time when you want to receive the summary of notifications. You can add multiple times and iPhone will automatically collect and show you the summary on all selected times.
- Scroll down and enable or disable the apps that you want to include in the summary under “Apps in Summary” section.
Final Words
Though you can use “Focus” mode, it looks Apple intentionally does not offer an option to disable all notifications. At this point, you need to disable notifications for each app or use the summary option. Additionally, you can use Guided Access option to disable any specific area (like top portion) of your iPhone’s screen. This will help to avoid touching the top notification area when you focused on an app or playing games.
