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How to Customize iOS 7’s New Notification Center

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One of the big new features in iOS 7 is the new Notification Center. Instead of just one view when you drag it down from the top, it now includes three different views that you can switch between using the tabs at the top, which consist of “Today,” “All” and “Missed.” Furthermore, you can also access Notification Center from the lock screen and even interact with notifications right on the lock screen itself.

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 7. However, you can 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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Customizing the Notification Center

To get to the settings and options for the Notification Center, open up the Settings app and navigate to Notification Center. From there, you have a bevy of toggle switches that you can take advantage of in order to make the Notification Center customized to your liking. Starting from the top, you can disable access to the Notification Center from the lock screen, either disabling the Notifications View, the Today View or both.

Below that are settings for the Today View. Here you can show exactly what you want to show in the Today View, including a summary of the current day, a calendar view of what your day looks like, reminders, stocks, and a summary of tomorrow.

As for the Notifications View, this is pretty much similar to the old Notification Center, where you can choose what apps show up in Notification Center, and you can sort them manually or give them priority based on the time the notifications come in. There’s an “Include” and “Do Not Include” on this page, the former which is a list of apps that will show up in Notification Center if any of those apps get notifications.

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Tapping on one of those apps will give you options for just that app alone. 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.

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. If you want disable a certain app from showing up in the Notification Center, go back to the main “Notification Center” window and click on “Edit” in the top-right corner. Three horizontal lines will show up next to each item. Tapping and holding on that will allow you to drag items to and from the “Include” and “Do Not Include” sections. You can also drag around items to sort their order if you want them sorted manually.

Getting the Old Notification Center Back

The new Notification Center is very different, and some users may really miss the old look. While you won’t get the exact look of the old Notification Center back, you can at least make it look like it. To make this happen, just turn off the “Today View,” “Today Summary” and “Tomorrow Summary” on the main Notification Center settings page. This will put the Notification Center back to its bare essentials.

However, you won’t be able to get the old Weather widget back in. Instead, the “Today View” provides a text-based version of the weather, but it’s not all that great. Hopefully, once iOS 7 gets jailbroken, we’ll be able to put a Weather widget back in there.

37 Comments

37 Comments

  1. Jamie

    09/18/2013 at 4:52 pm

    Thank you Got to be mobile for all the excellent tips through out today.I have flagged them and use them when needed. Great Job. Jamie

  2. Michael Pierce

    09/18/2013 at 9:15 pm

    Interesting. Under the “Today View,” I only have 2 options: “Today Summary” and “Next Destination.” I don’t have weather, stocks, tomorrow summary, or reminders. And in your example, you don’t have “Next Destination.” I wonder what’s going on…

    • Lindsay

      09/19/2013 at 4:04 am

      I only have next destination too, my husband’s looks like this example. Hope they work the bugs out soon!

      • Michael Pierce

        09/19/2013 at 4:12 am

        I rebooted my phone and all of the options showed up and a few more. I have 6 to choose from now.

        • Greg faber

          09/19/2013 at 8:41 am

          Worked like a charm! Thanks for your comment.

        • v.

          09/20/2013 at 7:23 am

          Dude, you’re a lifesaver! Worked great!

        • Sarah

          09/23/2013 at 1:13 pm

          Dang, you’re awesome! Thanks for the tip :)

  3. Alice

    09/18/2013 at 9:36 pm

    I don’t have weather either. I don’t have any current reminders or anything on my calendar for today or tomorrow, so I understand why nothing shows up for those categories, but no weather!

  4. Bill

    09/18/2013 at 11:40 pm

    no weather here either; i checked all the settings repeatedly. the only thing that I can possibly think of, is when I selected yahoo weather as default for notification with one of the jailbreak hacks. but my iphone had gone through a restore before updating, so I don’t know why I still do not have weather in notification center

    • lance

      09/19/2013 at 12:40 am

      I also had the same problem. I turned on location services for the weather and then It worked for me.

      • KelseyR

        09/19/2013 at 2:39 am

        Thanks! You solved my problem!

      • Pigmy Puncher

        09/19/2013 at 9:38 am

        Thank YOU! the weather location service was also my issue. Side note – it took about 4-5 minutes for the weather program to populate with data and finally show on the Notification Center..

  5. Fill

    09/19/2013 at 12:50 am

    For those not seeing the weather, turn on location services.

    Settings > Privacy > Location Services > Weather

    This will bring up the texted based weather in the notification are as described above.

    • Chris

      09/19/2013 at 1:14 am

      This did not work for me, still no weather showing up.

    • KelseyR

      09/19/2013 at 2:39 am

      Thank you!

    • Tina

      09/19/2013 at 7:31 am

      I don’t have weather or calendar info showing up – location services are on for weather, i turned phone off and back on, and i have every possible thing turned on.

  6. G

    09/19/2013 at 1:58 am

    I had this weather problem. Seems that you need yahoo to make it work. At the bottom of the notification screen it says weather, click on that and the yahoo box opens up and prompts you to add it to home screen. I now receive weathe info in the notification centre

    • Tina

      09/19/2013 at 7:34 am

      This did not work for me

  7. iPhone application development

    09/19/2013 at 2:53 am

    Updated to iOS7 and I am loving the interface.. everything has changed completely..
    Customized everything as per my usage, nice tips. Thanks.

  8. Carolina

    09/19/2013 at 2:55 am

    I miss posting on twitter and Facebook from the notification center. Taking that away was a mistake from apple.

  9. Aimee

    09/19/2013 at 7:47 am

    My calendar events is not showing up in my notification center… any idea why?

  10. Weatherappupdate

    09/19/2013 at 8:45 am

    After a restart my weather started showing up. *Did you try turning it off and on?*

  11. Steve

    09/19/2013 at 8:49 am

    None of the above worked for me – eventually I twigged that I needed to instal Yahoo Weather app from the app store.
    Weather now appears in “Today”!

  12. Don

    09/19/2013 at 9:19 am

    enable location services to the weather information in Notifications.
    Also, open the weather app and add your city or town.

  13. Kato

    09/19/2013 at 9:38 am

    I tried rebooting, made sure my location services were on for the weather app, downloading the yahoo weather app and turning location on for that. Still no weather in my notifications :(

    • Kato

      09/19/2013 at 9:41 am

      Adding yahoo to my home screen worked

    • Aimee

      09/19/2013 at 9:50 am

      I rebooted and everything and have events on my calendar but it shows no events in my notification center…

  14. Jacki

    09/19/2013 at 10:56 am

    To fix the weather issue in the Notification Center using iOS7 – Make sure locations is turned on, then go to the actual apple weather app, open it up and play with it for about 1 minute or so. Add a city, remove a city, go from one screen to another and back again. Once all its parts are fully activated, pull down the Notification Center and your weather should be there, If not, go back and play some more, It will then show up on the NC. it may even disappear again, if so repeat this and it will come back. Its an apple bug, they will soon fix.

    • ana

      09/19/2013 at 12:23 pm

      That solved my problem! Just played a little with the weather default app and it worked. Thanks my friend! Have a full and prosper life!

  15. Jacki

    09/19/2013 at 10:59 am

    Oh and make sure your location is showing up on that app too. Its the weather app that was preinstalled on the phone when you bought it.

  16. David

    09/19/2013 at 3:02 pm

    Why won’t an all day event such as a birthday appear in the notification center?

  17. Triggerine

    09/20/2013 at 12:20 am

    How did you find the weather app? It seems to me that the apple weather app was removed as part of the iOS7 installation?

  18. Scott Williams

    09/20/2013 at 7:50 pm

    The Apple Weather app is now pulling from Yahoo. I had the same issue as others but none of the fixes that were noted worked (unless I missed it). Like someone said, make sure weather is turned on in location services, then go to the Weather app. Mine had my city listed twice, w/ the first not displaying the temperature. It’s the only city listing that I couldn’t remove. If you look at the bottom of the screen, after the last city listed, you’ll see the Weather Channel and Yahoo Weather logos – click on the Yahoo logo and it will open up Yahoo in Safari and you’ll get a prompt to allow Yahoo access to your location – select yes, then go back to the weather app. After a few seconds, the temperature will display (assuming your issue is the same as mine). Now, when you pull down the notification center, weather will show up in the Today panel.

  19. Jonathan

    01/06/2014 at 7:52 am

    The only thing I can’t seem to fix no matter what I disable, push notifications, calendar and mail settings, is facebook birthday notifcations. I have two ipad mini’s and they receive them daily, no matter what I do. It’s starting to wear on my brain. IOS 7 really need to make a visible button that says yes disable these and yes I really mean disable them.

  20. Joe H

    01/10/2014 at 5:36 am

    Anyone figure out why Calendar Events and Birthdays do not show up in NOtification Centre – Or as On-Screen Notifications either? Whats the point in having events if you are never reminded of them? This is a major letdown, and I hope its not just a “design” issue with Apple. I’d sooner have these that the Weather in text format…

  21. gordonbrown505

    01/23/2014 at 9:25 am

    iPhone 4s, iOS 7 notification center settings do not work for the most part. Example: turned off reminders all together but every single reminder shows up,still. Set number of reminders to display at 1 (tried 5 as well) but all the reminders show up. Other settings that I marked to display won’t show up. Tried turning the device off and on too, did not make a difference.
    The fourth edition of IOS 7.1 beta has been released for developers registered with Apple. source : https://www.smartphonestutorials.com/fourth-edition-ios-7-1-beta/

  22. john steven

    05/29/2014 at 9:39 pm

    Wow, finally i got good information about customize ios notification, recently am purchased ios7 but am unable to customize any notification after gone through your article, am customized all notifications..Thanks for sharing..Please share more info about ios7..

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