- Priority Notifications can detect important alerts and surface them to the top
- It will also summarize multiple messages from one sender into a single line
- Reduce Interruptions is a focus mode that hides unimportant alerts
Most features of iOS are designed to let you do more, but two of the additions in iOS 18 are actually here to help you do less. Priority Notifications and Reduce Interruptions both eliminate distractions so you pick up your iPhone or iPad less often when trying to get something done.
This feature is available as part of the Apple Intelligence Beta in iOS 18.1, and will require an AI-compatible device.
Priority Notifications
With this new feature, Notification Center is more helpful than ever thanks to Apple Intelligence working behind the scenes as a kind of personal assistant.
Instead of all your notifications stacking up in chronological order, you’ll now see anything the AI deems to be particularly important surfaced to the top of the stack under a Priority Notifications header.
Moreover, it summarizes the notifications so you can see exactly what they’re about without tapping into the individual apps to investigate. For example, a long message from your boss might just be shown as “emergency meeting in an hour.” This way, you can quickly decide if each notification needs an immediate response.
Similarly, if you get a whole flurry of alerts from a single app, they’ll be sorted into a stack and summarized so you can catch up on what you’ve missed without scrolling through the lot.
Reduce Interruptions
Like Priority Notifications, this feature uses Apple Intelligence to filter your alerts before presenting them to you. But it works a little differently, and the two features can work in tandem to create an almost distraction-free working environment.
Reduce Interruptions is a new Focus mode that only shows you the most essential notifications, hiding the rest until you switch off the Focus. It’s perfect for times when you need to concentrate on something but don’t want to miss out on important alerts.
You can toggle it on and off from the Focus section in Control Center. You might even want to set it to turn on automatically during work hours, in which case head to the Settings app and choose Focus > Reduce Interruptions. Tap Add Schedule, or Smart Activation to do it for you at the appropriate times and locations.
For the most part, this Focus mode works just like Do Not Disturb mode. It’ll keep your Lock Screen free from alerts and silence incoming messages. The difference is that if the AI decides something needs immediate attention, like a message from daycare or a time-sensitive reminder, you’ll see it pop up in Notification Center with a Maybe Important tag.
These alerts will be summarized to give you the gist in just a few words, with the aim of protecting you from getting sucked into things that can wait until later.