I don’t write much about technology any more. And when I do, I aim to write about it in ways that are relevant to everyone – not just geeks like me! 

Today’s post is, as such, technology focussed but will, I hope, help us all. Let’s get to it.

As of this week, the iPhone has a new feature that I want to highlight. It’s part of iOS and iPadOS 15 and offers enhancements to how notifications are handled. 

I’ve written previously about my own radical cutting down on what notifications I allow to disturb me. Pretty much every app you install nowadays immediately asks you for permission to send you notifications. This is bad! How many of these notifications do we truly need?

The problem to date has been that it takes a lot of dedication to setup notifications in ways that minimise our lives becoming an endless responding to the buzzes of our phones. 

Apple is making it easier to get on top of notifications with a new feature that lets users schedule notifications. 

Instead of notifications coming through immediately, it groups all the notifications together and delivers them in one go at specified times. 

If an app delivers reminders or calendar appointments at specific times, these will come through. But for non-time-sensitive notifications, it’ll hold these back until the scheduled times.

I’ve been testing using it over the summer, and I love this feature! It took a little getting used to, but it’s worth persevering long enough to give yourself a chance to adjust to the change. You’ll like it.

I didn’t want this to be a how-to, but if you are interested in exploring this new feature, you can find out more via this Apple support guide. 

(In a similar vein, I’d recommend exploring a new ‘Focus’ mode on your iPhone too.)

–Sam

Got some thoughts on this? I’d love to hear from you – do hit reply or drop me a note.

@samradford | samradford.com