If you get a lot of iPhone notifications from social media apps, messages from friends and family and news alerts, you might feel overwhelmed. But if you have an Apple Intelligence-enabled iPhone, like the iPhone 15 Pro, Pro Max, the iPhone 16 lineup or the iPhone 17 lineup, you can enable Priority Notifications on your device so you only see notifications from apps that are important to you.
“Apple Intelligence can show you notifications that may be important in a separate section on the Lock Screen, so you can catch up on what you may have missed,” Apple writes in the feature’s description. “You can still swipe up to view all notifications.”
Apple introduced Priority Notifications to those iPhones with iOS 18.4 in March, and you have to enable the feature in your Settings. Once enabled, message notifications from your friends and family can appear near the top of your notification stack, rather than being buried beneath Ring alerts, Apple News updates and more.
Don’t miss any of our unbiased tech content and lab-based reviews. Add CNET as a preferred Google source.
Here’s how to enable Priority Notifications on your iPhone. And don’t forget, only Apple Intelligence-enabled iPhones can access this feature now.
How to turn Priority Notifications on
1. Open Settings.
2. Tap Notifications.
3. Tap Prioritize Notifications.
4. Tap the slider next to Prioritize Notifications.
After you tap Prioritize Notifications, a drop-down menu will appear with all the apps you can receive Priority Notifications from. You can go through the menu and enable or disable which apps you want to prioritize notifications from.
For more iOS news, here’s my review of the iOS 26, how to reduce the Liquid Glass effects in the update and how text screening works in the update. You can also check out our iOS 26 cheat sheet.
Watch this: Apple TV Plus Drops the ‘Plus,’ California Signs New AI Regs Into Law and Amazon Customers Are Upset About Ads | Tech Today
