Pull Down the iOS 8 Notification Center
A notification is an optional alert from an app that advises you of a new status or activity. For example, you can get a notification when you receive a new email message.
But alerts are easy to miss, so Notification Center compiles all your recent notifications in a single place. In iOS 8, Notification Center gains the power of third-party widgets in the Today view ①.
① The Today view in Notification Center summarizes your day, and it can now include widgets from third-party apps, such as Evernote and Dropbox.
Opening Notification Center
Place your finger above the top of the screen and pull Notification Center down like a window shade.
Closing Notification Center
Press the Home button or drag the handle (at the bottom of the screen) up.
Notification Center Layout
- Today view: Don’t look here for notifications, but rather for information specific to your day, such as the weather, calendar events, and traffic conditions. You can also install widgets from third-party apps into this view; see Adding a Widget.
- Notifications view: Check here for notifications you may have missed, grouped by app (see Working in Notifications View).
- The missing Missed view: If you used iOS 7, you might be wondering where the Missed view, which displayed missed notifications, has gone. It has been removed in iOS 8 to make way for a single, combined Notifications view.
Setting up Notifications
- When you launch an app for the first time, if it has a Notifications feature, you’ll be asked whether you’d like to receive notifications from that app. I suggest denying notifications for apps that you don’t need to hear from, like most games.
- To configure how (or whether) an app will notify you, tap Settings > Notifications and then tap app’s entry to view its Notifications screen ②. This screen offers a collection of options for how the app will notify you.
② In Settings > Notifications, you can set preferences for each app, including sounds, alert styles, and more.
Notification Types
- Badge: These small round images display on app icons to show how many unread items are in an app ③. Enable these for only the apps that truly need them, so the badges you see are important to you. For example, my email inbox has thousands of unread junk messages that I haven’t pruned, so I disable the badge for Gmail. But I leave it on for Messages, since I read all my iMessages.
③ Badges are hard to miss, but if they’re overused, they’re easy to ignore.
- Banners: A banner drops down from the top of the screen and disappears after a few seconds. This has been the default style since iOS 5 and is usually a safe choice.
- Alerts: The Alert style is Banners’ obnoxious older brother. These appear in the center of your screen, and must be acted upon before they’ll go away. Alerts are useful for notifications that you absolutely don’t want to miss.
Notification Center widgets were previously limited to a few Apple options, such as weather and stocks, but in iOS 8, other apps can have Today view widgets. For example, the Evernote widget makes it quick to create new notes ④.
④ The Today view can be augmented with third-party widgets. For example, if you use the Evernote note-taking service, its widget gives you a quick way to start new notes.
- In the Today view, scroll to the bottom of the view and tap Edit.
- Scroll to the bottom of the screen to see the Do Not Include list and find the widget you want to add.
- Tap that widget’s green add button ⑤.
⑤ To add a widget to Notification Center, tap its green add button. To remove a widget, tap its red delete button.
The widget’s entry moves into the top portion of the list.
- If you like, adjust the widget’s position on the Today view by dragging the grab handle at the right of its entry. Drag the handle up or down.
- At the upper right, tap Done.
- In the Today view, scroll to the bottom of the view and tap Edit.
- Tap the widget’s red delete button. Tap Remove.
- At the upper right, tap Done.
Working in Notifications View
- Manage a notification: Swipe over the notification from right to left. For most notifications, you see an x that you can tap to clear that notification. In some cases, however, you may see special buttons. For example, for Mail messages, you see Mark as Read or Trash buttons ⑥.
⑥ Swiping from right to left on a notification reveals an x, which you can tap to delete the notification. Or—in a few cases—you see other management options; for example, in the case of a Mail message, you can mark the message as read or send it to the trash.
- Work with a notification in its app: Tap the notification to open the corresponding app—often to a view related to the notification.
- Delete all of an app’s notifications: Tap the x to the right of the app’s name; then tap Clear.
- Delete a notification: Slide it up.
Copyright © 2014, Josh Centers. All rights reserved.
