What’s new in iOS 15 Notifications ?

Hello, I wrote this article to give you information about iOS 15 Notifications.

The most fundamental change in Notifications with iOS 15 is that notifications are divided into 2 parts.These are divided into Communication and Non-Communication Notifications. While Communication Notifications on the name are about messaging and calling, the other notifications are called discount, news or emergency notifications as Non-Communication.

It is clear that the purpose of Apple making this design is to prevent constantly disturbing the user with unnecessary notifications. It will not be difficult for developer to adapt to apps.

Let’s start with Communication Notification first.

Communication Notifications

Apple wants this notification type to be used for call and message notifications. Also they recommend that we use SiriKit intents for Communication Notifications. So users can customize notifications with Siri and set new behaviours as they wish.

With the findings so far, we know that we can enable Communication Notification by adding capability.After activating this capability, you can update the Notification Service Extension content in your application and use the new UNNotificationContentProviding protocol.

To add new capability, go to ;

Target > Signing & Capabilities > Add Capability > Select Communication Notifications

Apart from that, a full usage scheme has not been announced by Apple yet.

Non-Communication Notifications

On the other hand, Non-Communication Notifications seem to have been designed to not disturb the user unnecessarily. When designing Non-Communication Notifications application developers can add a new value as interruption-level to determine the urgency of displaying to the user or in other words, the priority of the notification. According to document published by Apple, there are 4 different types of levels. You can also examine them below.

Passive Interruption Level

We can say that it is the type of level that does not require the user to see notification urgently. Notification sound or vibration will not be at this level. It can be used mostly for game updates or place recommendations.

Active Interruption Level

It is the level sent by default in APN’s payload. Sound, vibration and screen light turn on but focus mode cannot break.

Time Sensitive Interruption Level

It is similar to active level but shown with a yellow title.It can also break focus mode and scheduled delivery. This notification should be sent only in very important cases.To use this type of notification, it is necessary to add the Time Sensitive Capability to the application.

Critical Interruption Level

Notifications at this level are always shown to the user. However, in order to use this level, it is necessary to define an entitlement. Apple wants this level to be used in urgent cases like personal health or safety situations.

If you want to develop a notification structure at these levels for now, you should add it to the payload of APN’s with the “interruption-level” key.

One of the important points that Apple emphasizes is that we shouldn’t set low-importance notifications as high-level and disturb users. It is important that we should be as realistic as possible when determining the interruption level. There is no restriction on this issue for now, but it does not mean that it will not happen. With the excess of unnecessary low-level notifications, you can both disturb the users and reduce the popularity of your application and create a negative effect on the Apple side.

These are the ones that will talk about iOS 15 Notifications for now. In another article, I will tell you the situations I found about the use and structure of the Focus mode.