Hear Time Sensitive Notifications on Your AirPods
Two years ago, in iOS 13, Apple introduced the ability to hear incoming message notifications on your AirPods, and now iOS 15 will expand that to include important notifications from apps as well!
This means that you won’t need to worry about missing important notifications like upcoming appointments or reminders when you’re out for a run with your AirPods. Instead, Siri will read them out to you as soon as they come in.
The key to making this work is Time Sensitive Notifications, which comes as part of iOS 15’s new Focus Modes. In short, certain apps can designate specific notifications with a higher priority level than normal, allowing them to punch through even in those cases where you’ve muted other notifications.
For instance, Apple’s own apps like Calendar and Reminders already use this in iOS 15, but only for notifications like upcoming appointments and tasks that are due — things you’d presumably want to know about right away. However, other notifications from these apps, such as when somebody shares a calendar with you, aren’t considered “Time Sensitive” and are handled normally.
Likewise, we’re hoping third-party developers will jump on this. For example, it would be nice to get a higher-priority notification from Uber Eats when your food arrives at your doorstep without having to be bothered by promotional notifications.
Note that only Time Sensitive incoming notifications will be delivered by default, but you’ll also be able to specifically enable this for all notifications for any app, although doing so will cause all the notifications from that app to be delivered through your AirPods, whether those notifications are important or not.