iOS 10 SMS and iMessage notification issues

Wow, so after trying everything listed in this thread multiple times, I finally figured out my issue: the iPhone 7 has a ring/silent switch on the left side, above the volume buttons. If it's red, it's toggled to silent. There's an hour of my life I won't get back, but at least now I know...

This whole notification thing, or lack thereof, has troubled me since iOS 10. I have a 6S+ and since iOS 10, my notifications work perfectly fine as long as my phone is locked or I am actually in the messages app. However, if I am using ANY other app, I don't get a sound or vibration notification at all. But, if I minimize whatever app I'm using, I do see a number on my messages icon indicating I have an unread message.

I have turned off iMessage, rebooted, turned it back on, same thing. I have logged out of all of my Apple related accounts, rebooted, logged back into them, same thing. I have wiped my phone and done a restore, same thing. I have confirmed that in settings --> messages --> send and receive, the only thing checked is my phone number, same thing.

The ONLY thing I've found that makes notifications come through when I'm using other apps is if I go to settings --> notifications --> messages and have "show in notification center" and "show on lock screen" both on or both off. However, I want my ****** notifications to show on my lock screen and I certainly don't want them to appear in the notification center.

Has anybody found any other tricks to try?

I finally figured out why my iPhone wasn't always ringing for text/SMS messages. Sometimes it would ring and sometimes it wouldn't so it was very confusing. But some of the suggestions in this thread led me to the fix.

1. I have an iPad 3 and an iPhone 6. I was using iMessage on both.

2. On the iPhone 6, I was set up to use my phone number for iMessage. On the iPad, I was set up to use my Apple ID but only my email addresses.

3. I was receiving ALL messages on my iPhone 6, but not all of them were ringing.

4. I was NOT in Do Not Disturb mode on either device.

5. My iPad was set up to never notify for iMessage (because I rarely use it for iMessage and I always have my phone on me), but my iPhone was set up to notify with vibration, sound, banners, and when locked.

6. Some of the contacts that weren't ringing included people that were set up for Emergency Bypass.

Oddness:

When I went into my contacts to configure ringtones for them, the ring tone would NEVER sound while I was picking them.

After signing out of iMessage on my iPad and signing in on my iPhone, I am receiving audio notifications on my iPhone again.

Regardless of what address sent to, devices NEED to be able to be configured with DIFFERENT notification settings and those settings need to work independently of each other. If I turn off notifications for an app on one device, it CAN NOT affect the settings for that same app on a different device EVEN FOR THE SAME APPLE ID.

mjbroekman wrote:

Regardless of what address sent to, devices NEED to be able to be configured with DIFFERENT notification settings and those settings need to work independently of each other. If I turn off notifications for an app on one device, it CAN NOT affect the settings for that same app on a different device EVEN FOR THE SAME APPLE ID.

With some exceptions involving the Apple Watch, notification settings on one device do not affect those on another device, even one with the same Apple ID. My iPad is set to never notify for Messages but I still always receive the notifications on my iPhone. My Amex app only notifies me on my iPad.

I suspect what actually resolved your issue was signing out of iMessages on your phone and back in, though it's impossible to say for sure.

This is so frustrating...I tried it and it did not work for me. Apple told me to trade my phone in because it has been less than 14 days so I did this morning. It worked for a little bit but now it does not. I am not sure if it has something to do with being synced to my computer and my apple watch but this is so frustrating!

I think this was my problem...my text messaging would not sound, but the phone would ring sometimes (form my favorites...I now know).

I thought the moon meant (reserve the battery) or something like that...

I'm another one that's tried most things that have worked for other people, and I'm still getting spotty text notification sounds. Like when I was at the airport yesterday, trying to connect with my wife who was flying in. Good thing that I opened my phone and looked, since I had a text message notification waiting on the lock page saying that she had landed and was going to get her baggage. Then she texted me again about having gotten her baggage, and again, no notification sound although the text was delivered and was on the phone's lock page. Then when I got home, and used second factor authentication to log into my bank account online, I got what sounded like 3 notification sounds that were all at the same time, kind overlapping.

So, for some reason, the notification tones were queued up, but not delivered at the time of the text messages that they were associated with. This has been going on for some time, probably started when I updated to iOS 10, and needs to be fixed. I've heard multiple text notification sounds at the same time before, but this time it was such a well-defined series of texts and notification sounds that it was clear what was going on. Clearly a bug, from what I've observed, can't think of a setting that would affect the delivery of notification sounds by iOS. Very annoying, since I have to look at my phone fairly frequently to see if I've had any text messages...

Hahaha OMG Thank you I totally did not see this before and wondered for so long why I wasnt getting any sound notifications. This little tiny switch which i never noticed before fixed this issue. Thanks!

Well, I seem to have made some progress on this. We got the new Verizon 4G/LTE Network Extender, which gives us 4 or 5 bars of cell strength throughout the house. I was using wi-fi calling, since Verizon cell strength is one 1 or 2 bars at my house, not enough to reliably make phone calls. Now that we have a strong cell signal and don't need wi-fi calling, I don't believe that I've missed a text notification since turning on the Network Extender a few days ago.

Not sure about this yet, and it should not fix this problem away from home, but having text messages fully working at home is great. Time will tell, but after about a week, text message sound notifications are solid.

I was reading thru here and see if there was a solution to this but no, but I did do something that fixed it (Enable Do Not Disturb and a moon icon should appear on your upper screen, now what you gotta do is leave the lock bottom and the home button pressed till it restarts with the Apple logo . This will fix it, now you will have to turn off do not disturb and it will work ! Worked for me.

I am having the same issue (it is getting me in trouble with my wife, she thinks I am ignoring her). I have discovered that if I turn off bluetooth, the issue resolves. The problem is that I leave bluetooth on all the time to link with my car, headphones, iwatch etc. Can you fix this bug Apple?

Tjones201 wrote:

Figured it out... there is a switch above the volume buttons.., it is a manual DNS switch. Clicked it up... all good!!

"DNS" generally means "domain name server". I think perhaps you mean DND. Apple actually calls it a mute switch. It's function is similar to DND but not identical.

This is definitely a major problem, I have done some of the solutions given here and it WORKS (temporarily)! It all goes back to not getting a "sound notification" when receiving an "iMessage" (or text message from none iPhone users). People tend to give solutions without thinking that they have to be "very" specific as to giving instructions. Just because you understand what you're saying doesn't mean you're giving good instructions for everyone to understand!

I hope Apple comes up with a fix soon before the new iPhone 8 (or named something else) is out for September 2017.

Cheers,

Ardy

I had the same problem on my iPhone 7. Turns out I had switched on silent mode by pressing the little button on the left hand side of the device down. Flipped it back up and now everything is ok again.

Tried all the solutions here. None worked for me. So I finally decided to restore my iPhone 6s using iTunes, and then restore my configuration from my iCloud backup. That seems to have fixed the notification problem for me, finally. My phone is much more enjoyable if I don't have to check for text messages all the time. I had almost given up on using it.