Summary

• iOS 17 is a mature operating system, but Apple can still make a ton of changes to its notifications.
• For example, notifications should seamlessly expand and disappear within the Dynamic Island to enhance the visual experience.
• iOS should introduce smart phrase suggestions in notification replies, similar to what is available on Android, to provide convenient and contextual replies.

The latest iPhones are rapidly becoming more customizable and feature-rich. With every major iOS update, Apple copies some Android features, perfects them, and deploys them to the masses. And while iOS 17 is basically a mature mobile operating system at the time of this writing, it still has its fair share of shortcomings. Some of the major annoyances I experience when using my iPhone 15 Pro Max are in the notification department, and I can think of at least five improvements Apple could apply to address them.

5 Per-app notification tones

The same alert for all apps doesn't really cut it

If you're an iPhone user, then you may have noticed that pretty much all third-party apps have the same notification tone. While some developers choose to adopt a custom one or allow users to pick their own tone, the default behavior is quite limited. Apps that haven't integrated the custom notification alerts feature all sound the same.

This is something I miss about using Android. Apple could easily allow users to pick per-app tones in the Settings app, as we already can choose per-app languages. The change wouldn't require developers to adopt or change anything. While iOS 17.2 finally allows users to change the default iPhone notification tone, it still remains the same sound across all apps. Before this release, users couldn't even change that one tone that rings the most, and that's ridiculous. We can hope that iOS 18 addresses that.

4 Dynamic Island integration

It's time to make better use of this hardware-software sorcery

Another aspect I dislike about iOS notifications is mostly cosmetic. When the entire iPhone 15 series adopted the Dynamic Island, I was pretty sure Apple would introduce new changes that revolve around it. Considering that we expect this hardware-software hybrid to stick around for at least a few years, the company could dedicate resources to further develop its capabilities.

I've seen on some Android phones the notifications expanding from the hole-punch camera smoothly, then shrinking back moments later. Right now, only Live Activities (persistent notifications) are supported by the Dynamic Island, and regular alerts drop under it in an unnatural-looking way. A welcome change would be having the notifications expand as part of the Dynamic Island, then disappear completely a second later to distinguish them from Live Activities.

3 Smart replies

Android users have had this for eons

Another feature I miss from when I used to use an Android phone is smart replies. When receiving a notification from an instant messaging app, I'd be able to reply with a complete phrase right from the notification panel. These replies would be auto-generated based on the text you've received. While the suggestions weren't always perfect, they typically got the job done.

You can currently reply directly to some IM apps' alerts from the Notification Center on iOS, but there aren't any smart phrase suggestions there. It's just the regular keyboard with auto-complete and next-word suggestions rather than smart, contextual ones. Funnily, the Apple Watch already has a similar smart replies feature, so porting to iOS wouldn't require Apple a ton of resources.

2 Cross-platform sync

The ecosystem is tight enough to handle that

With macOS Sonoma, you can place iOS widgets on your Mac's desktop when your iPhone is nearby, and I think that's mind-blowing. But guess what? iPhone notifications still don't sync to macOS, which, at this point, is more than technologically possible. A welcome change would be optional notification mirroring, allowing us to interact or dismiss these notifications when working on our computers without picking up our phones or using the Apple Watch's tiny screen.

Another issue with notifications is duplicates. I have, when possible, the same apps installed on my iPhone, iPad, and Mac. When an application notifies me, three devices receive the same alert. This is intentional behavior, and I consciously don't want to turn off notifications on some of my devices, as I'm not always near them all. My problem, however, is that once I dismiss or open a certain notification on one device, it remains there on the other two.

Considering that these are identical notifications being sent simultaneously, Apple could easily detect them and optionally sync their statuses through iCloud. This way, when I don't use my iPad for a few hours, I won't return to find a heap of unread notifications that I'm already up-to-date with on iOS or macOS. While some apps, thanks to the devs, dismiss their notifications automatically on all your devices when you check them on one device, many others don't. Maybe iPadOS 18 and macOS 15 will implement that.

1 Better management

Granular controls could make notifications less stressful

While iOS offers a Notification Summary feature, I often wake up to an overwhelmingly crowded lock screen. Apple could improve notification management on iOS by introducing different channels at the system level. This would allow users to toggle or filter the type of notifications they would want to receive per app, such as direct messages, social interactions, promotions, and more. Through this sort of categorization, users could also quickly address higher-priority notifications when busy while leaving the rest for free time. Anything but the current, endless wall of notifications that many of us don't know how to handle.

Apple could improve iPhone notifications in so many ways

While I've only highlighted the five major annoyances I face when dealing with notifications on iOS, Apple could still improve so many other aspects. At this point, the iPhone is notorious for having an inferior, infuriating notification system, and some of my friends even perceive it as a valid reason for not switching back to iOS. For now, we can only rant about these issues and hope Apple addresses them when launching 2024's OS updates.