How to Disable or Enable Notification Summary

Quick Steps

1. Open Settings.
2. Select Notifications.
3. Select Scheduled Summary.
4. Disable or Enable Scheduled Summary.
5. Set Time and schedule.
6. Choose Apps you want to be added to the Summary.

If you want to know detailed steps, keep reading below.

The 2021 iteration of the iOS operating systems offers a variety of features that helps to improve the overall smartphone experience. Even though apps like FaceTime, iMessage got major updates in terms of features and improvements, Notifications got some changes as well.

We have a new Focus mode that helps users to avoid distractions as much as possible by enabling users to choose a mode where they could stop receiving notifications from a particular app or even many. One other feature to Notifications is the new Notification Summary.

What is Notification Summary?

If you are not aware of Notification Summary, it’s the new feature in iOS 15 which is specifically designed to aggregate notifications that are not time-sensitive and shown to the user together in a single batch. You could personally choose what time you want to see those notifications.

This feature is super new and you have to be very careful to add apps to the summary feature because you could easily miss a lot of time-sensitive notifications if you happen to do so.

How to Disable Notification Summary?

1. To Disable Notification Scheduled Summary, Go to the Settings App.
   
   
2. Choose Notifications section from the Settings.
   
   
3. Select Scheduled Summary from the list that appears right below Show Previews. Turn it OFF.

How to Enable Notification Summary?

1. To Enable Notifications Summary, Go to the Settings App.
   
   
2. Choose Notifications section from the Settings.
   
   
3. Select Scheduled Summary from the list that appears right below Show Previews.
   
   
4. Once you are in the Scheduled Summary page, the option will be disabled by default if you have never used this feature. Enable this option if you want Notifications summary.
   
   
5. As soon as you enable this option, you will see more options like Schedule and Apps in Summary. You will also see that the 1st summary is enabled by default. You can change the time of it if you want. You need to know that one schedule will always be there if you enabled Summary.
   
   
6. Tap on Add Summary if you want to add one more to the schedule (2nd Summary). You can tap on the time area if you choose to modify the time of the notification summary schedule.
   
   
7. You could also choose what apps need to be added to the Notification Summary. So, the idea is that if you enable certain apps in the Summary section, Notifications from only those apps will be added to the Notifications Summary. To do this, tap on Apps in Summary below schedule. As you can see, in the Apps in Summary section, you will see the list of all the apps show in order of the daily Notifications average. The apps with more notifications show up at the top.
8. If you want to see the apps in the alphabetical order, tap on the A to Z tab. The Daily Average Notification tab is better if you ask me because it helps to make summary decisions better.
   
   
9. Choose the apps that you don’t want to see the notifications of all the time. As you can see, I have chosen Twitter, NDTV, Youtube and Instagram. These are not time sensitive and I can get to them when I get time without losing out on urgency.
10. Also, you can delete on any Notifications Summary schedule if you choose so. Tap on the red (-) icon next to the Time and you will see a Delete option as you can see in the screenshot below. Choose Delete and that particular schedule will be deleted. There won’t be an Undo option, so be careful when you delete or you will have to create it again.
    
    

Once that’s done, you will receive notifications as a summary from the apps that you have chosen in the list at the particular time you preferred. This is a great feature because notifications are a great distraction to our lives. As soon as we hear that ping or whatever sound it makes, we stop whatever we are doing and focus on the smartphone. This is definitely not good for our productivity.

Personally, I’m definitely happy that Apple is taking steps towards making the iPhone an object of less distraction. Obviously, it comes down to the personal preference of the end-user. I have been using Summary & Focus mode for the past couple of weeks and I have to say that those two are amazing features. Do check it out. I hope this was useful.

You may like these iOS 15 posts too:
1. How to use Separation alerts in iOS 15?
2. How to Enable Portrait Mode on FaceTime iOS 15