How to prevent notifications from making iPhone screen light up

Have you ever been annoyed with your iPhone or iPad sometimes automatically turning on the screen when a notification arrives? If yes, you can completely fix this with just a few simple steps as below.

Quick Fix: Enable 'Do Not Disturb' Mode

Apple provides a feature that can allow you to quickly put your iPhone or iPad on 'silent', which is 'Do Not Disturb'.

Once activated, Do Not Disturb mode mutes incoming calls, messages, and notifications by default. Of course this can also change depending on how you set up the feature.

To quickly enable Do Not Disturb mode, first access the Control Center on your iPhone or iPad by swiping down from the top-right corner of the screen. (If you're using an older iPhone, swipe up from the bottom of the screen.) Then, tap the Do Not Disturb button (whose icon looks like a crescent moon) to activate the feature.

Alternatively, you can also launch the Settings app, select the 'Do Not Disturb' item and tap the switch next to the 'Do Not Disturb' option to enable it.

A deeper fix: Turn off lock screen notifications

If you find the Do Not Disturb feature too 'extreme' (you still want to be notified of incoming calls, for example), dive deeper into your device's notification management settings.

The good news is that Apple allows you to turn off lock screen notifications for any app already installed on the device. The bad news is that there's currently no way to edit notification settings that apply across all apps at once. So you will have to manually turn off notifications on the lock screen of each app (which causes the device screen to light up) manually.

To get started, open the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad by tapping the gear icon on the home screen.

In the Settings menu, tap 'Notifications'.

In the Notifications section, scroll through the list and tap the name of the app that you want to prevent notifications from waking the screen. The Messages app is used as an example here, but you can also do the same for Facebook Messenger, Signal, Twitter, FaceTime, or any other app.

On the app's notification settings screen, tap 'Lock Screen' to uncheck (deactivate) this option.

Then, go back one screen and repeat the process above for any other apps where you want to disable lock screen notifications.

When done, exit Settings and you'll no longer see notifications from those apps on the lock screen, meaning they won't be able to wake your iPhone screen anymore.

David Pac

Update 29 May 2021