Apple rumored to redesign notifications in iOS 16

This story is part of our complete Apple WWDC coverage

Apple is set to unveil iOS 16 in a few months at its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) 2022, and according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, the company may be tackling one of the major issues of iOS: Its awkward notification center. The company is not expected to make any sweeping changes in the vein of Android 12, however.

Man looking at notifications on his iPhone 12. — Dan Baker/Digital Trends

Apple’s handling of notifications in iOS has been criticized as being ill-thought-out for a few years now, especially in contrast to Android’s. “Android has evolved to make the notification tray, and notifications in general, as useful as possible, but trying to be productive in an iOS notification tray — although possible — is much more difficult,” Digital Trends’ Michael Heller noted in 2021, adding: “Conversely, iOS displays the illusion of simplicity while hoping you don’t notice the redundancies all around.”

The company had changed how notifications work by merging them with the lock screen in iOS 7, adding in bundled notifications, as well as a new notification summary with iOS 15, but it still hasn’t caught up to the immensely flexible and functional Android notification center.

Where Android works better is the snoozing, as well as more actionable notifications and more ways to see where an app has notified you or not, as well as a less messy interface in general. In other words, you have a lot of ways to see and manage your notifications. If Apple can implement a few things to bridge the gap between iOS and Android, or even create something that is better, it may be enough to lure some Android holdouts over to iOS.

It is not yet clear if Apple may debut any other sweeping interface changes to the operating system. Gurman says Apple is also expected to add in new health-tracking features and other unspecified but significant improvements.

Apple is expected to unveil iOS 16, MacOS 16, tvOS, and perhaps even a new operating system for its rumored headset in June.

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