While Apple’s annual World Wide Developers Conference is usually a pretty flashy affair where the tech giant shows all of its latest software, this year’s event was a little more subdued. Instead of adding tons of new software features this year, Apple opted to focus on feature and performance improvements to make the overall user experience better.
One of the most exciting feature updates you find on iOS 12 is rather basic. Apple completely changed the way the iPhone and iPad manage Notification updates. The messy clutter of cards that once filled your Notification Center screen has been replaced by something much more refined and easy to use. That’s right, Apple has finally embraced group notifications in iOS 12.
While Notifications continue to appear as individual cards in iOS 12, they’re not categorized and stacked by app. For example, if you have a dozen Twitter notifications, instead of seeing each notification individually as you would on iOS 11, you’ll now see a stack of them with the most recent sitting on top. If you want to review all of your notifications, just tap on the top card.
Deleting notifications is also much quicker on iOS 12. Instead of closing each notification individually, you can now opt to delete all notifications for a specific app. And if you still find the number of notifications overwhelming, iOS 12 allows you to delete every notification in the Notification Center with a single tap.
iOS 12 is doing more than simply changing the way you read and delete notifications, however. You now have several quick and simple ways to manage notifications directly from the Notification Center.
The easiest way to manage notifications in iOS 12 is simply by long-tapping on the card in question and tapping the three-dot menu icon. From here you’ll see three options: You can either have notifications quietly bypass the lock screen and appear only in the Notifications Center, or you can turn off notifications for a particular app altogether. On the same screen, there’s also an option to open the Settings menu to make changes to notifications for multiple apps.
But you may not need to make any adjustments to your notifications at all since Siri now can now provide contextual recommendations based on how you use your phone. For example, Siri may recommend turning off notifications for rarely used apps, or suggest certain apps deliver notifications quietly — meaning they are only visible in the Notification Center.
Two new highly requested iCloud plugins just got added to ChatGPT, giving people who rely on Apple’s Mail and Calendar services a way to search emails, check appointments, and manage their schedules directly through the chatbot.
The integration is rolling out to all ChatGPT plans, including the free tier. You can access it on the web, desktop, and iOS.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.
Samsung’s scandal over its Game Optimizing Service, or GOS, has returned with a bill attached. South Korea’s Fair Trade Commission has tentatively fined the company 20.1 billion won, or about $15.1 million, over gaming claims made for the Galaxy S21, Galaxy S22, and Tab S8.
The regulator says Samsung promoted the devices as gaming powerhouses without disclosing that GOS placed preset CPU and GPU limits on certain demanding games. Samsung disputes that conclusion, calling GOS a legitimate way to manage heat.