iOS 15 is set to go public later this year and we’ve already got the sneak peek into what the next version of Apple’s mobile platform brings to FaceTime, Spotlight, Safari, and Photos. Besides app-level changes, Apple is also improving how you’re presented with notifications with Focus mode, Do not Disturb in Messages, Left Behind alerts, and more.
Another significant addition to iOS 15 is Notification Summary – a feature that lets you select certain apps in such a way that you only get their notifications that are not time-sensitive at a convenient time. This way you won’t often be bothered by non-urgent notifications from some apps and since they’d be delivered to you at a later time, you don’t need to feel left out either.
If you’re facing issues while setting up or using Notification Summary on your iPhone, the following post should help you fix them with ease.
Which iOS version do you need?
Notification Summary is an iOS 15 exclusive feature and if your iPhone is running iOS 14 or older versions, you won’t be able to access the feature inside the Settings app on your device. iOS 15 is currently only available as part of a developer beta on select iPhones and unless you’re absolutely okay with running into bugs and issues on your daily driver, we’d advise against installing the iOS 15 developer beta on your phone for now.
To check the iOS version on your device, open the Settings app and go to Settings > General > About > Software Version. For the Notification Summary feature to work, the version should say “15.0”.
If the Software Version reads 14.7, 14.6, or older, then you must know that your iPhone doesn’t have the feature, at least for now.
Related: iOS 15: How To Disable Notification Summary or Get Less Summaries Per Day
Know the right way to set up Notification Summary
While it’s true that you can use the Notification Summary feature only on iOS 15, Apple doesn’t automatically turn it on when you install its latest beta OS. Instead, you will have to manually enable the feature inside Settings to be able to manage notifications and receive a group of lower priority notifications when you actually want to receive them.
To start using the Notification Summary feature on iOS 15, open the Settings app on your iPhone and tap on the ‘Notifications’ option.
Inside Notifications, select ‘Scheduled Summary’.
On the next screen, toggle the switch adjacent to ‘Scheduled Summary’.
If this is the first time you’re using the feature, you should see a popup menu giving you a rough overview of what Notification Summary is all about.
It’s important that you read and understand what the feature is and then decide whether or not it would be important for you.
To proceed with setting up this feature, tap on the ‘Continue’ button at the bottom.
Next, you need to select the apps that you’re okay not receiving non-urgent notifications from.
Select the app from the list and then tap on the ‘Add Apps’ button at the bottom.
Now, you need to choose how you wish to schedule notifications from these apps. Set a time for notifications for different summaries by tapping the time adjacent to each summary.
To increase the frequency of Notification Summary, tap on the ‘Add Summary’ option and select the time you want to set for it.
Once you’ve configured the setting to your preferences, tap on the ‘Turn on Notification Summary’ button at the bottom.
When it is enabled, you should see the setting toggled ON inside the ‘Scheduled Summary’ screen.
After setting up Notification Summary, you can make further modifications to the frequency, schedule, and apps you want to get notifications as summaries.
It could be a bug
At the time of writing this, iOS 15 has only rolled out as Developer Beta 1, in the earliest phase of its development. These early developer betas are known to quite buggy and are only intended for developers to test their apps and optimize them on the upcoming version of iOS.
If you’re facing issues while using Notification Summary, a lot of that might be because of the beta firmware. You can expect these bugs to be ironed out in future beta releases or when iOS 15 rolls out to the public. If you somehow installed the latest iOS 15 beta, you can use the Feedback app on your device to send a bug report to Apple so they work on resolving the issue.
Still facing notification Summary issues? 7 Ways to fix
If you’ve set up Notification Summary as we explained above but you’re still facing issues when getting notifications, then you can follow the steps below to make it work on your iPhone.
#1. Make sure you have selected apps you want summaries from
You will only get summaries from an app if you have selected the app under Scheduled Summary. To enable an app for Scheduled Summary, open the Settings app, go to Notifications > Scheduled Summary > Apps in Summary.
Now, enable the toggle adjacent to the app you want summaries from.
#2. If you cannot select an app inside ‘Apps in Summary’…
The objective of using Notification Summary is to be able to read non-urgent notifications from selected apps at a convenient time. But what if you cannot select the app you wish to get summaries from inside the ‘Apps in Summary’ screen, then chances are that you have entirely disabled notifications for the app in concern. For example, you can see in the screenshot below that the Twitter app isn’t available inside the ‘Apps in Summary’ screen.
To make it appear in this list, you will have to enable notifications for the app you want to get summaries from by going to Settings > Notifications.
On this screen, select the app whose notifications you want to turn ON.
Next, enable to toggle adjacent to ‘Allow Notifications’.
This should turn ON notifications from the app. If you wish to add the app directly to the list of apps that have Scheduled Summary enabled, select the ‘Scheduled Delivery’ option inside the same screen.
The app will now be added to the ‘Apps in Summary’ list and will be enabled as well.
#3. Increase your summaries frequency
Since Notification Summary only shows you notifications at a time you set for it, you may end up missing some notifications or getting them way later than you might have wanted them to appear. Although the feature was added to iOS to make you focus on something better, you may want to increase your summaries frequency to make sure you don’t miss out on some notifications.
In order to increase the frequency of your summaries, you need to open the Settings app and go to Notifications > Scheduled Summary.
Next, select the ‘Deliver Summary’ option inside the ‘Frequency’ section.
On the next screen, select the frequency you think is right for you.
Note: To focus better, we’d suggest you set a notification summary every 3-4 hours from morning to night. If you wish to get notifications every 3 hours from 10 AM to 10 PM, you can have summaries 5 times a day.
Tap on the ‘Back’ button at the top to go to the previous screen.
Once you select the summary frequency, you may want to modify the timings of the summary accordingly. You can do so by changing the time for all the Summaries you have added.
To change the time on a Summary, just tap on the time beside it and scroll through the hour and minutes until you have set the right time. Repeat this step to change the time for all your Summaries.
You will now receive Notification Summaries at the times you assigned, more often than before.
#4. Understand you have no control over rearranging summaries
Since Notification Summary uses on-device intelligence to analyze which of your notifications are more important than others, there’s no way to control how the Scheduled Summary looks on your iPhone. Your summary is personalized for you but you cannot change the order of these notifications and which apps to stress over more than the other.
At the same time, you’ll get all urgent and time-sensitive notifications from apps enabled with “Scheduled Delivery” immediately. Thus, it’ll be left with Apple and an app’s developers to decide which notifications are non-urgent and which ones are time-sensitive.
#5. Restart your device
If you set up Notifications Summary the way we explained and you’re still not able to use the feature, then the easiest way to get it resolved is by restarting your iPhone, in case you haven’t yet. Rebooting a device essentially resets the RAM, cache memory, and dumps all existing background services, and since we’ve already explained how buggy iOS 15 beta is, restarting your iPhone should help fix your issue.
To restart your iPhone, and hold the Power button (or Volume up and Power buttons) until you see Power off slider, slide over the setting, and wait for your iPhone to power off.
When the device has completely switched off, press and hold the Power button again until you see the Apple logo appear to restart the device.
#6. Perform Hard Restart on your iPhone
If restarting your phone doesn’t solve your issue, you must try hard-restarting it. On iOS, hard restarts can help clear the sandbox and other app caches and at the same time, resets certain background services. To hard restart your iPhone, follow these instructions:
- For iPhones with a Home button: Press and hold the power button and the home button simultaneously till you see the Apple logo. Once the logo appears, let go of the buttons immediately and let your device restart.
- For iPhones with NO Home Button: Press and instantly release the Volume Up button, then press and instantly release the Volume Down button, and lastly, press and hold the Power button until your iPhone restarts.
#7. Reinstall iOS 15 beta
It has been established that the iOS 15 beta is still in its early stages of beta testing and there are a lot of bugs that need to be ironed out. Sometimes, bugs may arise even during the installation which may cause core features on iOS to break. In such scenarios, the best possible outcome is to consider installing a fresh copy of the iOS 15 beta.
To do this, you will need to remove the current developer profile from your iPhone. For this, go to Settings > General > VPN & Device Management > iOS 15 Beta Software Profile, and select the ‘Remove Profile’ to delete it.
You will now get a notification prompting you to update to the latest iOS 14 public release. If not, go to Settings > General > Software Update and follow the on-screen instructions to install iOS 14.
Once iOS 14 is completely installed, you can download and install the developer again to reinstall iOS 15. Make sure your device has sufficient charge or simply keep it plugged into the socket until the iOS 15 beta is installed. Check if the Notification Summary option is now working as intended.
That’s all we have on fixing the Notification Summary feature on iOS 15.
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