This Beta iPhone Feature Uses AI to Sort Your Notifications

Priority Notifications is a new Apple Intelligence feature that's rolling out with the iOS 18.4 update, which is currently in beta. It's one of the last AI features that we will see with the iOS 18 update cycle, and it goes hand-in-hand with Apple's Notifications Summary feature, though they are distinct. Perhaps because of the backlash Apple got to Notification Summaries, this feature isn't even enabled by default. You have to enable it instead.

How Priority Notifications Work

Like many new Apple Intelligence features, Priority Notifications uses on-device AI processing to figure out what your most important notification is at any given point. Then, it surfaces those notifications (sometimes bundling up two or three and providing a summary) right to the top.

When the feature is enabled and an important notification comes in, you'll see it a new Priority Notifications box above the rest of your pings. Like with many Apple Intelligence features, this box has that same multicolor glow all around it, so you can know it was made by AI.

What exactly is important and not, is deemed by Apple's processing algorithms. In my testing, I found that things like missed calls, one-time codes for deliveries or logins, messages from my bank about transactions and emails from my work account always came up top. These will depend on the person and the use case, but overall, this feature is designed to help people who don't manually manage their notifications well. So, if you're always swimming in dozens of notifications from food delivery apps, shopping apps, or news apps, having a dedicated section up top to tell you when you've missed an important message or a call might be genuinely useful.

How to enable and customize Priority Notifications

Apple isn't enabling this feature by default, even if you've already enabled Apple Intelligence. To find it, go to Settings > Notifications > Prioritize Notifications and toggle it on.

Credit: Khamosh Pathak

Now, you can let Apple do its thing, and it'll try to figure out which of your notifications are truly important.

But to improve things, you can go one step further. If you scroll down, you will see a list of all the apps that can feed into the Priority Notifications system. If you don't want to see any false positives, you can apps you don't want to see in the Priority Notifications box, like food delivery apps, news apps, and so on.

Credit: Khamosh Pathak

If you find that Priority Notifications isn't for you, you can come back to Settings > Notifications > Prioritize Notifications to disable it altogether. If you're feeling the notifications overload, you can also take some time to customize the rest of the iPhone notifications system so that it works for you, instead of against you.

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