whatbrentsay

The combination of notification summaries, Focus modes, and minor UI tweaks brings iOS close to offering its users a holistic approach to controlling how, when, and if they receive certain notifications.

I asked for a few UX tweaks on my WWDC wishlist, with these two being closest to the core problem(s) iOS 15 is looking to solve:

• Separate noisy and silent notifications like Android does.
• Ability to mute and snooze notifications for a given amount of time.

In the spirit of the requests above, the theme of iOS 15's notification updates is reducing noise. This is done by, one, allowing users to define how they receive notifications—be that immediately or at set times via notification summaries. And two, linking notifications to a user's real world context—be that work, home, play, or something else—thus offering control over when notifications are received.

I believe this overall framework is a hit. Apple has essentially created the same active/passive distinction between notifications that Android has. Of course Apple has done it in their own way.

Focus modes allow users to create presets for apps and people that can notify them "noisily." Paired with summaries users can drastically alter who and what notify them and how those notifications behave.

The collection of features already works well in dev beta 1 but it falls apart in one key place. Imagine your company uses Slack to communicate internally (if it doesn't already). You may also use Slack personally to keep up with groups of friends and colleagues. When you set up your "Personal" Focus Mode, how do you prevent those work Slack messages from bothering you? The answer is you can't. This problem also exists if you use the same app for work and personal emails and calendar management.

Right now, Focus can only paint with broad app- and contact-level brush strokes. Again, the framework is good but some important details are missing. I can't imagine a way for apps to subdivide their notifications on iOS without further support from the system itself. Without the ability to tell iOS that all notifications from a given app are not the same, it seems unlikely that Focus will be able to solve the use case raised above. A solution for it is necessary for Focus to reach peak usefulness, so I expect it will come. I'm just disappointed that iOS 16 is the earliest we're likely to see anything like it.