iPhone not getting text notifications

Have you checked Settings>Notifications>Messages to make sure that you have either Banner or Alert selected as the notification type and that you have sounds enabled there?

Same issue here as well with IOS11 and Iphone7. The text message notifications stopped working after a while when the phone is locked even if not on silent, they worked fine for some time then stopped. This is a bug and not by design, the reason is because it's solved by a reboot. I rebooted my phone and notifications started working again.

"Ensure that you do not enable the do not disturb option for some contacts. Open the message app feature and check if a moon sign appears next to the contact. If yes, then you should disable it. Open messages, tap the info button and disable do not disturb." What I did was: checked info of the contact that was texting me, and CHECKED OFF HIDE ALERTS. Details at: http://www.fireebok.com/resource/what-to-do-when-text-message-notifications-not- working-in-ios-11.html

Hi Tom,

I dont know if you are still having a problem with regards to not receiving alerts when a text message comes in?

I found that it was only happening with texts sent from certain contacts. I checked all of my settings etc just like everyone else and then discovered the problem.

I delete most of my text messages by swiping to the left. Unknown to me, Apple have added another toggle to the swipe left function, that toggle is a "Hide Alerts" function coloured in purple. I have obviously hit that toggle when swiping left instead of the red delete toggle.

This has then silenced any future texts from that contact - hence no alert and no lock screen notification.

How did I find out which contacts I had affected? I sent them a text message and then clicked on the i at the top right of the message screen. This then showed if I had "hide alerts" for that contact on or off.

Hope this helps Tom.

John

I stopped receiving notifications today and was stumped, even after reading through this forum - till my son asked if "Hide Alerts" was on.

On the text screen, go to the "i" in circle at top right of screen and check through options. "Hide Alerts" should not be switched on.

Somehow it had got switched on, on my phone, so I switched it to off, and that fixed it for me.

I had the symptoms mention in this topic and was equally frustrated.... I fixed it in the messages app - when you receive a message from someone of course you can swipe to the left to delete it - there is a new option there next to the delete "show alerts" / "hide alerts" - right next to the delete. Make sure its "show alerts". that fixed it for me. I must have pressed it accidentally when trying to delete a message.

Do you see a cresent moon next to the text that didn't notify you? If so, swipe left on it and click "Show Alerts". You somehow clicked hide alerts at some point. I did the same thing to my wife's text and was having the same problem.

After much research, I am convinced that at least in my case, there isn't any setting that will fix this. It's an Apple FEATURE. If you wear an apple watch, and it is paired to your phone, text notifications go ONLY to the watch. So if you turn off Bluetooth on the phone, the watch can't get those notifications, so they go back to the phone.

Ideally, Apple would change this behavior such that the notifications would go to BOTH devices.

But as it stands now, I just turned up the notification volume on my watch, and I haven't missed a text yet.

This started in September 2017:

iOS 11 has a new "feature". In iOS 11, you are allowed to hide alerts from both general SMS and iMessage conversations directly in Messages app on your iPhone and iPad. This enables you to hide alerts from SPECIFIC senders! If turned on, message alerts will not show up on your iPhone or iPad screen once you turned on the hide-alert toggle.

Somehow this toggle was turned on, on my wife's iPhone 7, just for ME . We have no idea how (so she says). I think that possibly the update process did it. For months and months she was missing my text messages because she was not alerted by any means. The only way to know she got a text from me was to manually go to text messages and check. It was maddening!!! She was always texting with others (even during our conversations) but never responded to mine. We practically ended up in divorce court!

Go to text messages, select the text stream for the specific person, at the top of the screen, to the right of the person's name click on the circle "i" and you will see "Hide alerts" with a toggle. Be sure the toggle is turned OFF. Especially for your significant other!

It took me forever to figure this out. Someone does finally mention it at the bottom of this post.

Ok, so the top pinned answer from uVr4BsveiHdOxXNI worked for me - disabling bluetooth from Settings (not from Control Center) made notifications light up the phone with the ding (as opposed to phone staying off and notification only showing up when activating the phone).

It turns out in my case that the watch was causing this. Turning off bluetooth only worked because my watch was paired with the phone (active bluetooth connection, ofc) and the watch itself was on silent. So the phone was duly delivering notifications to the watch which was silently discarding them. Un-silencing the watch made the ding come up on the watch - but the phone still doesn't get it anymore.

So at this point the question would be whether it's possible to get notifications (with dings) BOTH on the phone and on the watch.

Same thing happened to me.

In my messages with her, I clicked the I at the top right and "hide alerts" was slid to green. Check that on your contact.

All, I may have stumbled on the cause and fix. I have had this same problem since iOS 11.

Hope this helps others....

Short story:

Try going to Settings --> Bluetooth and disable Bluetooth.

Retest Messages and alerts / sounds come through fine.

Some combination of enabling/disabling BT kills the notifications, read on for more...

Long story:

Initially, it seemed that I could reproduce the problem and the resolution.

Go to Settings --> Touch ID & Passcode, enter your passcode, then scroll down to:

"ALLOW ACCESS WHEN LOCKED":

"Recent Notifications" (I had this unticked)

With this unticked, I get zero alerts when the phone is locked. If I re-tick the "Recent Notifications" toggle, then my Messages alerts/notifications come through just fine.

Or so I thought! This worked a few times, then stopped completely again!

So, I previously had issues with iOS 10.x on my iPhone 6S getting Message notifications when Bluetooth was enabled. So, I almost always left it disabled.

I noticed that with iOS 11 Bluetooth seemed to keep re-enabling itself automatically somehow. So, I kept turning it back off via Control Center.

It appears in iOS 11 however, that turning off Bluetooth via Control Center does NOT actually turn Bluetooth off. It seems more like a soft disable because there is a new message there that says "New Bluetooth connections have been turned off from Control Center". Which is actually kinda cool, but anyways...

With Bluetooth "off" in Control Center and no Bluetooth icon in the top status bar, I then went into Settings --> Bluetooth.

Guess what? Bluetooth is enabled! Disable Bluetooth completely and lock my phone. Send a new text iMessage from another device and voila!, I get the notification pop up and sounds/vibrations. All good!

Some combination of enabling/disabling Bluetooth via Control Center kills the notifications/alerts.

If I re-enable Bluetooth, alerts still come through, but if I disable Bluetooth from Control Center again....alerts are gone again.

This is the solution that worked for me (iPhone 6):

Settings - Notifications - Messages

- ‘show as banners’ setting On -

- change ‘temporary’ to ‘persistent’

My banners were set to temporary, which was new.

All working now

Replying to the entire thread (not just to KMA82):

Way back on September 23, I offered my own experience here. To summarize: text messages, which I had opted not to appear on the lock screen because for security reasons, we’re not generating any notifications at all. I submitted a bug report to Apple.

I have solved the problem in my own case as follows: I switched back on the “Show in Lock Screen“ option for Messages notifications (which I had deliberately turned off), and enabled the new “Show Previews —> When Unlocked” feature at the top of the Notifications settings. Now I get all my notifications on the lock screen, but nothing more than an indication that there is something to be seen, not the content. A simple TouchID unlock is all it takes to be able to view them fully and act upon them (so my security needs are met).

This is mode of operation my help others with a similar problem. I hope it does.

I had this problem with my wife's phone not getting text sound notifications when I send her a text message.

I solved this. Go into the Messages iPhone app. Go to the list of text recipients. If you left swipe on one you can delete it (i.e. deleting all the text messages who have received) or you can toggle Hide Alerts/Show Alerts. It turns out my wife had Hide Alerts selected. Once I changed it the text message sounds worked again.