- How to reduce distractions and use your phone less
- Priority Notifications picks out important notifications
- Reduce Interruptions is a smart type of focus mode
Most iPhone features are designed to help you do more. These two help you do less. Priority Notifications and Reduce Interruptions both use Apple Intelligence to filter out distractions – surfacing what actually matters and hiding the rest. Here’s how they work, and how to get the most out of them.
This feature requires an AI-compatible device.
Priority Notifications
With this feature, Notification Center is more helpful than ever thanks to Apple Intelligence working behind the scenes as a kind of personal assistant.
Instead of all your notifications stacking up in chronological order, you’ll now see anything the AI deems to be particularly important surfaced to the top of the stack under a Priority Notifications header.
Moreover, if you have Notification Summaries enabled, it will condense multiple alerts from the same app or sender so you can get an idea what they’re about at a glance. For example, a long barrage of texts from your boss might just be shown as “emergency meeting in an hour.” This way, you can quickly decide if it needs an immediate response – just be mindful that these summaries aren’t always completely accurate, so don’t treat them as gospel.
Reduce Interruptions
Like Priority Notifications, this feature uses Apple Intelligence to filter your alerts before presenting them to you. But it works a little differently, and the two features can work in tandem to create an almost distraction-free working environment.
Reduce Interruptions is a new Focus mode that only shows you the most essential notifications, hiding the rest until you switch off the Focus. It’s perfect for times when you need to concentrate on something but don’t want to miss out on important alerts.
You can toggle it on and off from the Focus section in Control Center. You might even want to set it to turn on automatically during work hours, in which case head to the Settings app and choose Focus > Reduce Interruptions. Tap Add Schedule, or Smart Activation to do it for you at the appropriate times and locations.
For the most part, this Focus mode works just like Do Not Disturb mode. It’ll keep your Lock Screen free from alerts and silence incoming messages. The difference is that if the AI decides something needs immediate attention, like a message from daycare or a time-sensitive reminder, you’ll see it pop up in Notification Center with a Maybe Important tag.
These alerts will be summarized to give you the gist in just a few words, with the aim of protecting you from getting sucked into things that can wait until later.