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How to Customize Notification Center in iOS 8

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One of the big new features in iOS 8 is the improved Notification Center. The design remains largely unchanged from iOS 7, but it includes more options for customizability.

However, one big difference is the change in tabs at the top. iOS 7 used to have three tabs, which consist of “Today,” “All” and “Missed.” In iOS 8, you get two tabs: one for notifications and the other being a “Today” tab where you can place app widgets.

The new Notification Center is quite the change from previous iOS versions, so it may come as a bit of a shock initially to a lot of users who update to iOS 8. However, you can easily customize it to fit your needs, and you can even disable a lot of the new Notification Center features if you liked the simple functionality of the old one.

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Perhaps the biggest change from the iOS 7 Notification Center is the addition of widgets in iOS 8, which allows users to put app widgets into the “Today” tab in the Notification Center from apps that support it. This can come in handy when you want to look at information quickly and easily, and while iOS 8 is still fairly new, there are a handful of apps that support Notification Center widgets.

Customizing the iOS 8 Notification Center

There are two ways to customize the Notification Center in iOS 8. One way is through the Settings app, and the other way is by going directly into the Notification Center’s “Today” tab and tapping on the Edit button at the bottom.

First, let’s go into the Settings app to see what we can customize there.

By navigating to Settings > Notifications, you’ll have some options to choose from when it comes to customizing the Notification Center on iOS 8. The first thing you’ll see is how notifications pop up in the first place. You can either select Sort Manually to have notifications from apps be listed in a particular order, or you can select Sort By Time to have notifications listed depending on when you receive them.

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Below that, you’ll see a list of apps that you have installed on your iPhone or iPad. Tapping on one will take you into the notification settings for that particular app. If you don’t want notifications at all from that app, simply toggle off Allow Notifications. Otherwise, you can customize different aspects of what kind of notification you want to receive, such as sound, badge app icon, and how you want to be notified in the first place.

In other words, you can choose what kind of alert you want to receive. A Banner is when you simply get the notification up toward the top of the screen and it will go away after a few seconds. An Alert is a pop-up notification that you have to take action on; these are better for those who absolutely don’t want to miss a notification.

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The Badge App Icon is the little red dot with a number inside of it that shows up in the top-right corner of an app icon, letting you know that there’s a notification waiting for that app that needs action.

Show on Lock Screen refers to whether or not you want a notification to show up on the lock screen. If not, you’ll get an alert, but it simply won’t show up and stay on the lock screen.

The second method for customizing the Notification Center is choosing what widgets you want included in the “Today” tab.

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When you check out this tab for the first time, you’ll already see some widgets that you may or may not use, but scrolling down and tapping on Edit will allow you to choose which widgets to include and which not to include.

From there. you can tap on the green plus icon to add a widget to the Notification Center or tap the red minus icon to remove it. Apps need to have support for widgets in iOS 8 in the first place, so not all apps that you have installed will have the ability to show a widget in the Notification Center.

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