Qualcomm’s new commercial stars Justin Long as a frustrated Mac user who decides to spend hundreds of dollars on a new computer instead of managing notifications objectively terrible. (The mockery was so vicious that Qualcomm removed the commercial from its YouTube channel!) But it brings up a fair point: notifications are a complete mess, regardless of the OS or device you’re using. The tools you’ll find on your computer or phone to manage them are overly complex and difficult to explain to someone unfamiliar with the settings menu. I’ve covered and used iOS for years, so somehow I understand how Apple’s various notification options work, but good luck explaining it to someone else.
That’s why it’s the number one thing on my list for Apple to fix in iOS 18 (and really all of its platforms) when it’s announced. at WWDC next week are notifications. Rumors haven’t hinted at any major changes this year, but a boy can only dream. But the big problem with notifications isn’t really Apple, Microsoft or Google, it’s software developers.
Poshmark, a platform for buying and selling fashion items, is a perfect example. My wife gets constant notifications from the app and makes me wonder why she doesn’t just turn them off. Turns out, when you’re selling something, you want to know if someone’s messaged you or bought something, but it’s nearly impossible to sort those notifications out of the myriad of ad junk the app throws at you.
To test things out, I just went through the hiring process for Poshmark. After creating an account and logging in, the app asked if I wanted to turn on notifications. Every app on iOS has to ask you if you want these — but if you say yes, you’re selecting whatever the app wants to send you. There are more detailed controls buried within the Poshmark app itself that allow you to turn on and off different types of notifications, including “party invites,” “picked just for you,” “daily deals,” “live events,” and more. In fact, there are about two dozen different types of notifications in this app alone! I mean many. I also got something like four notifications in the first hour after barely using the app. many. Many.
Apple has done its best to help users find these settings. If you go to the global iOS notifications settings, you can control the options for each app on your phone. Below that list is an option that takes you directly to the app to allow you to do things like turn off most of Poshmark’s 23 different notification types. There’s also the option to let “time-sensitive” notifications (things like direct messages or calendar reminders) notify you immediately while moving other notifications to the feed.
The problem is that most people don’t have the time or mental capacity to do this for every app they install, which leads to situations that Qualcomm very cleverly wraps in its terrible advertising. I accepted that when I woke up in the morning I would find a ton of meaningless notifications on my phone, although I did my best to aggressively prune them where possible. . At this point, I wonder if I’ll find anything useful when I swipe through my Notification Center, which means I miss important reminders about things I need to address.
It’s also worth noting that Apple has tried to tweak notifications over the years with tools like Do Not Disturb, grouping notifications, sending them to a summary, and of course deciding how intrusive they are. If the red bubbles give you a stir, easily turn them off or your phone will light up with every message you receive. But again, it’s incumbent upon the user to be aware enough of the many ways they can customize their notification settings, and many people don’t do this until their phone is completely flooding them with pings.
Of course, I don’t have anything useful as a “solution” to offer here, but I think the best way is for Apple to figure out how to incentivize developers to flood users with notifications. Perhaps in addition to the existing opt-in dialog for notifications when you first launch an app, Apple could force developers to show you notification options so you know exactly what the app wants to send you. And instead of turning on all notifications, the app can start with everything turned off by default, so you can check only the things you really want to see.
But I also doubt that more parameters to pass will fix things. People still want to install an app and start using it without spending five minutes going through an increasingly detailed notification settings process. The end result will be the same, lots of apps taking up valuable real estate on your phone and brain. But they’re paying Craig Federighi and company big bucks to figure this out, not me – I hope he has good news on Monday.
