Apple is changing iPhone notifications, but not how people want

Unsurprisingly, Apple’s WWDC keynote focused on the Apple Intelligence Features that will reach all Apple products. Apple announced a series of interesting updates for iOS 18and the notification management function is also being slightly improved.

Traditionally, iOS users have faced a notification management system that is objectively inferior compared to Android’s more intuitive approach. With iOS 18, Apple addresses these concerns (or at least tries to by harnessing the power of artificial intelligence).

The big change coming to iOS 18 notification management is the introduction of AI-powered notification summary. Unlike the existing system, which simply prioritizes important alerts at the top of the notification stack, the new AI-powered summary goes further.

By analyzing the content of notifications, Apple’s AI will be able to provide users with concise summaries of their notifications, extracting key information from long conversations or threads. This functionality was demonstrated through examples such as extracting the main talking points from a group chat about an upcoming trip or summarizing discussions from social apps like Reddit.

Apple’s AI will also be able to understand important details from text notifications, such as upcoming appointments or reservations, and display them prominently on the lock screen without having to open the message itself. Apple also talked about the ability to intelligently reduce interruptions by hiding unimportant notifications while still keeping you informed about urgent tasks, like picking up someone.

While these features seemed useful in Apple’s demos, it doesn’t seem like these improvements go far enough to address the platform’s underlying shortcomings. For what it’s worth, this is at least the only new iOS feature announced today that isn’t already on Android.

The first wave of newly announced Apple Intelligence features will begin rolling out this summer to US English users. It’s worth noting that not all iPhones will be eligible to learn about all the new Apple Intelligence features.

This is a developing story…