iOS 15 Messages Notifications Not Working

kapster4040 wrote:

Many of us have had the same calls from senior advisors over the past months with no resolution to the issues. I wish you success.

My senior advisor who was looking into this blew me off yesterday. Told me that "these types of issues usually get resolved in a future software update so that is the best advice I have at this point". Dead end.

AlexDaMan wrote:

I had this issue also. I believe it was fixed with iOS 14.3.

It might have been fixed in iOS 14.3, but it broke again in iOS 15. As of 15.3.1, the notification defect remains.

In my case, it seems to be inter-related to my Apple Watch. If I disable Bluetooth on my Xr, notifications on the phone return. Even if locked, an incoming message will trigger audible notification and a banner on the lock screen (which is the expected/desired behavior).

I've installed 15.4 on my XR.

The notification defect seems to be fixed. I've done a little testing with a few iMessages (blue) and SMS texts (green). Early results are promising. Message notifications (audible, (ding), visual, and haptic) now appear on iPhone even if the screen is locked (dark), as long as:

(a) my Apple watch is turned off (or locked) and

(b) my MacBook is not nearby and/or is sleeping.

However, if Apple watch is on my wrist (powered up & unlocked) and is 'close' to the phone, notifications do not appear on the locked phone screen. The phone remains silent and dark. Instead they get delivered to the watch, assuming that notifications for Messages are enabled there.

If MacBook is (a) not sleeping and (b) is 'close' to the phone, it appears that notifications get delivered to the Mac instead, and not to the phone. My few tests of this scenario were inconclusive. I suspect that Apple is using Bluetooth LE technology to determine if multiple Apple devices are nearby, and then trying to avoid multiple dings being generated from Macs, iphones, ipads, and/or watches.

The quick testing above was performed with the watch still on 8.4.2. I have not allowed it to update to 8.5 (which was delivered along with iOS 15.4). One step at a time. Perhaps I'll update the watch later this week after getting more experience with iOS 15.4 to see if it has robustly fixed the notification issue on the iPhone.

I'm not seeing exactly what you are in 15.4. I'm having the classic notification going to my Watch only. I did some testing and if I power the watch down, I get notifications (haptic and sound) in the lock screen as I've been used to for years. It seems the new 15.x

My Apple Support rep told me this is as designed. There is only supposed to be one notification buzz/sound and the watch takes priority. I don't like it, so I submitted a feature request to at least allow us to pick watch only or watch & phone.

@fprintf,

My (limited) experiments indicate that if the watch is unlocked and 'close' to a locked phone, the watch will receive priority and deliver the notifications. Apple assumes that users don't want to be bothered/annoyed by multiple beeps with each incoming message. So assuming the watch is 'in-service' (i.e., on your wrist), you should be getting notifications only on the watch. But only if the phone is locked (sleeping). If the phone is unlocked and user is doing something with it, notifications seem to then go to the phone. The phone takes priority if it's in use.

To get notifications only on the phone (even while wearing watch), it's possible to disable them on the watch. That's configured through the phone's Watch app, under Notifications/Messages/Custom/Notifications off.

But I haven't found a way to get them on both watch & phone. A lame workaround is to configure a watch face with the Messages app as a complication. New messages will then be 'announced' silently by a tiny text legend ("N Unread") as part of the complication.

It's all become awfully complicated, especially when adding in the recent Focus feature.

Still no text message notifications on my 8 plus after downloading IOS 15.4. All of the settings are fine, no different than last Dec when the notifications were working. I'd appreciate some feedback as to whether or not 15.4 solved other folk's issues so I can determine whether or it is the 8 plus which is the problem and not the updates.

I now have four days of experience since updating iPhone XR to 15.4. Notification of incoming messages (both blue and green) seems to working OK. If Watch is sitting on its charger, they get delivered to the (dark) locked screen of iPhone with banner, beep and haptic buzz. If Watch is on my wrist, they get delivered to the Watch instead (unless the phone is unlocked, in which case they appear on the phone and not the watch). However, there still is a bug. The notification on the phone occurs twice, about a minute apart, even though the Repeat Alerts parameter is set to "Once" (in Settings/Notifications/Messages/Customize Notifications). Better than that not at all.

@WestfordJoe Any chance you have another Apple device logged into the same iCloud account, and 'close' to the iPhone?? You indicated you have no iWatch. What about a Mac? Occasionally, I think I've noticed that message notification arrives on my MacBook, and not on the locked iPhone. Seems random - can't reproduce that behavior. I wonder if Apple's complex notification software might be inhibiting notification on your phone if it thinks you've been notified via a Mac.

But in other news, 15.4 seems to have broken notification from some other apps. One of my apps that used to issue a notification every morning at 9am has stopped doing so since I updated to 15.4. Troubleshooting of that is ongoing...

I just initiated warranty replacement of my iPhone 13 Pro because of this issue. It's costing me $32 to receive the replacement phone before I send mine back. I don't know if this will fix the text notification problem, but at least this option is costing Apple money, which will hopefully get their attention.

You could try temporarily turning off the other devices (or put them to sleep). Then see if notifications appear on the phone. That experiment would indicate if the presence of the other devices is impacting notifications on your phone.

A few weeks ago, I found that turning off Bluetooth on my phone restored phone notifications. That wasn't a solution, but led me to the conclusion that the iOS 15.3 phone wasn't doing notifications if the watch was 'visible'. You could try that experiment too, while waiting for the replacement iP13 to arrive.

Yes, I could do the iCloud experiment, but I've already spent over 40 hours troubleshooting this issue, including over 20 hours on the phone with about six so-called Apple Support Advisors. I'm tired of providing free β-testing for Apple when they're too lazy and greedy to do it themselves before releasing a new product.

I have the 12 phone and have not gotten any RED notifications since iOS 14. I have widgets & icon covers. The notification problem was right after that.

It has been a year that I have had to do a work around to not receive the drop down notifications from the top of the screen.

Several YouTube users have suggested to do a shortcut for all apps & also go to Screen Time/activity & at the bottom of the screen you see the days of the week. You go back till you see one that has shortcuts. Then you turn off the drop down notifications.

It will work temporarily. I guess 50% of the time I don't get the drop down. And if you have to reboot for any reason then you must go back thru the last task of Screen time. It's really annoying.

So in order to stop the drop down I go through that AND still do not have notifications for any calls, texts, calendar.

Very annoying & I can't believe it isn't fixed yet.

How will we know when it is fixed? Keep looking here or what???

I had the same problem for several weeks. One bright Apple Support agent figured out that the problem was with one of my "Focus" settings. I had "Available" focus turned "ON" and "Allowed Notifications" set to "People"> "none" and only a few Apps allowed, Messages was NOT one of them. I turned "Available" to the "off" position and, bingo!, I started getting notifications (banner and audible) again. I need to research how to properly use Focus settings.

First time using an iphone and this is happening to me too! On WhatsApp and signal. I got in trouble at work for not responding my WA. I really hope this gets fixed asap, or I'll have to switch back to Samsung.

On an iphone 13pro

pandu192: I had the same problem and figured out, with the help of Apple Support, that the problem was my "Focus" settings. Try turning OFF all Focuses and have someone send you a WA. In my case, I had a Focus named Available but in the settings for it I did not have Messages and WA "allowed". As soon as I turned Available off, I got notifications. After about a week, and researching more on how to use Focus, I reprogrammed the Available focus and notifications continued to work as desired. If you have problems, I suggest you CALL Apple Support. They should be able to help. If not, hang up and call back right away. You'll get a different person. Hope this helps.

Interesting, but I had already turned off all my focus settings, including with "help" from Apple "Support", and I still didn't get audio notifications of incoming text messages.

Having tried everything else, I filed a warranty claim on my iPhone 13 Pro and got a new one. I transferred my data and settings directly from the old phone to the new one so, in theory, the new one should have been set up identically to the old one. It's been nearly four weeks, and audio text notifications are still working. Go figure!