How to Manage Push Notifications on the iPad

Save your iPad's battery life and your sanity

What to Know

  • Turn off or on: Tap Settings > Notifications, select an app, and toggle Allow Notifications off or on.
  • Choose an alert style: For active notifications, select Lock Screen, Notification Center, or Banners.
  • From Notification Center: Select X to clear all, tap to expand an alert, or slide left on an alert and tap Manage, View, or Clear.

A push notification on your iPad notifies you of an event without the need to open the app, such as the alert that appears on the screen when you receive a message on Facebook or the vibrating buzz and sound that plays when you get a new email. This feature lets you know about events without taking the time to open a lot of apps, but it can also drain battery life.

iPad Notification Settings

Push notifications are managed on a per-app basis. You can turn off the notifications of a particular app, but there is no global setting to turn all notifications off. You can also manage the way you are notified by each app.

  1. On the iPad Home screen, tap the Settings app.

  2. Tap Notifications.

    Notifications tab in iOS settings on iPad
  3. Tap the app you want to manage to open a screen for that particular app's Notifications settings.

  4. To turn off notifications for the app, turn off the Allow Notifications toggle switch.

    Allow Notifications toggle in iOS settings on iPad
  5. To enable notifications for the app, turn on the Allow Notifications toggle switch, then select one or more alert types. Choose either Lock Screen, Notification Center, or Banners.

  6. If you chose Banners, select a Banner Style, either Temporary or Persistent. You can also select an alert sound and turn Badges — the number that appears in the corner of the app icon — on or off. Additional options include whether to show previews during an alert and whether to repeat an alert

  7. With some apps, an additional entry displays at the bottom of the Notification screen for an app. For example, the News app shows News Notification Settings. This setting displays additional app-specific notifications.

    News Notification Settings in iOS Settings on iPd
  8. Tap News Notification Settings to open a screen of settings for the News app. Use the toggles to select which news sources you want to notify you.

    News Notification toggles in iOS Settings on iPad

    The content of these additional settings varies by app. For example, the additional notifications for the Podcast app can be managed to alert for new episodes of specified podcasts. The Twitter app offers notifications for Tweets, Mentions, Retweets, Likes, and a list of other activities on the app.

Using the Notifications Center

In iOS 12, Apple introduced the Notifications Center to manage multiple notifications. It displays the most recent notifications from your apps, grouped by app. To open the Notifications Center:

  1. Swipe down on the upper-left corner of the iPad screen. The notifications are grouped by app. The most recent notification is on top with the app name, a preview, and the time it was issued. Previous notifications from that app are nested under it.

    The Notification Center

    Tap the X at the top of the notifications screen while the notifications are collapsed to clear the notifications.

  2. Tap the top notification to expand the stack of notifications for a single app.

    Expanding the notifications for one app
  3. Slide a notification to the left to review the options. Tap Manage to open a settings screen for the app and a link to other settings. Tap View to open the story, link, or related post. Tap Clear to remove the notification.

    Manage, View, Clear buttons in Notifications on iPad
  4. Tap the X next to Show less for the expanded app notifications to remove the notifications for that app.

  5. Tap Show less to collapse the app notifications to a single entry.

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