Even Better Notifications

iOS 15 also promises to make some big improvements to notifications, giving them a brighter and bolder look. Notifications for things like messages and emails will now include contact photos instead of simply showing the app’s icon, while other notifications will have larger icons to make it more obvious where they’re coming from.

A new Notification Summary feature will also help to collect low-priority notifications, grouping them together and allowing you to schedule when you want them to be delivered. This will be useful for users who still like to get things like news and social media notifications without being overwhelmed by a constant barrage of them.

Like everything else, Apple is promising that on-device intelligence will be used to arrange the summary and place the most relevant notifications at the top, making it easy to catch up.

More importantly, notifications from actual people (e.g., Messages, Mail, WhatsApp, etc) will always come through immediately and never end up in the summary.

Lastly, Apple is expanding the Announce Messages with Siri feature into Announce Notifications with Siri, allowing AirPods users to have all important or relevant notifications read back to them, not just incoming messages.