Notification Center Settings
Apps communicate with you through the Notifications Center. See “Using Notifications Center” in Chapter 1. There you receive alerts telling you all sorts of things: incoming email, new messages, game events, news items, and so on.
The Notification Center settings is where you decide how important each type of notification is, and how it should be displayed, if at all.
- Tap the Notifications Center category in Settings.
- Use these switches to configure whether notifications and the summary of today’s events should be shown in Notifications Center while you are on the lock screen. This information would be available to anyone holding your iPad, even if they have not entered your passcode to get past the lock screen.
- Use these switches to configure what information should be available in the Today View portion of the Notifications Center screen.
- You can have all the items in the Notifications Center sorted by time, or sorted manually in an order you specify, by tapping one of these options.
- If you choose the manual option in step 4, tap Edit at the top right of the screen to be able to arrange the apps listed on this screen. Set them in the order you want them to appear in Notifications Center.
Tap an app to edit its settings.
- Choosing the None alert style means that neither a banner nor alert will appear.
- Choosing Banners means that a drop-down banner will appear when the app has a message, and it will go away on its own after a few seconds. These do not interrupt your work when they appear.
- Choosing Alerts means that a box pops up in the middle of the screen when the app has a message, and you must dismiss it to continue.
- Turning on Badge App Icon means that the icon will show a number over it when there is a message.
- Many apps let you set the specific sound used. Tap Alert Sound to specify the sound the app uses.
- Turn off Show in Notifications Center to exclude these alerts from the Notifications Center screen completely. You will still see the alert when it happens, but it will no longer be in the list when you access Notifications Center.
- Tap Include to choose how many alerts appear in the list in Notifications Center.
- Show on Lock Screen means that alerts from this app appear, even when the iPad is locked.
Turn off Show Preview so that the small preview of the message does not appear with the alert.
- Tap Repeat Alerts to configure whether the alert will repeat after a few minutes, and how many times. It is useful to have an alert repeat in case you missed it the first time.
Tap Show Alerts from My Contacts to remove the blue checkmark beside Show Alerts from Everyone. For the Messages app, this turns off alerts for those not in your contacts list.
Each app has its own set of settings, so take a few minutes to go through them all and see what options are offered. As you add new apps to your iPad, any that use the Notifications Center will be added to this list, so it is a good idea to review your settings occasionally. When a new app wants to send you notifications, it first must ask you for permission. This is where you can go to revoke that permission later on.