Your iPhone makes it easy to know when you've received a notification, letting you enable pop-up messages, audible chimes, and notification badges so you can keep tabs on all your apps. And while most of these features are great, many users will quickly find notification badges to be intrusive and stress-inducing.
Notification banners are the tiny red dot you'll see at the top-right corner of any app that has an alert. These can become frustrating, as a screen filled with notification badges (or a single Gmail app reminding you to check your 500 unread messages) can be an absolute eyesore. Thankfully, Apple makes it easy to control your notification badges with iOS 17.
Here's a look at how to control notification badges on your iPhone and iPad.
In most iOS versions, including the latest iOS 17, you control notifications via Settings, where you can enable or disable them with a toggle, as well as specify how they should look and when and where they can appear. You can choose the look, location, and duration of banners, control audio alerts, and choose how and when to view notification badges.
Step 3: Observe the list of apps under Notification style.
Step 4: Each app notification is handled separately, so review the settings by tapping each app one by one.
Step 5: Within each app, you will see a list of options. To get rid of the badge, toggle the Badges option off.
By default, notification counters do not appear in the App Library. Many iPhone users prefer to minimize the number of apps on the home screen via the use of the App Library, so if you prefer to see numbered alert badges while using the library, you must enable this option. Here's how to do it.
Step 1: Launch the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad.
Step 2: Tap Home Screen and App Library.
Step 3: In the Notification badges section, toggle on the switch for Show in App Library.
Step 4: If seeing the badge in your App Library is preferable, just switch the toggle back on for the full effect.
The iPhone's Focus mode blocks incoming notifications, but it still can allow the red counter badges to appear on your home screen app icons. You can set your Focus mode to hide them when active. Here's how.
Step 1: Launch the Settings app and select Focus.
Step 4: Toggle on the Hide notification badges switch.
Affinity’s new all-in-one creative app is finally coming to the iPad, nearly a year after Canva launched the redesigned desktop version for Mac and Windows. Creatives have been asking for the iPad release ever since, especially because files created in the new Affinity app cannot be opened in the older V2 iPad apps.
Affinity already has Photo, Designer, and Publisher apps on iPad, but the new release combines those tools into the same unified app that Canva launched on desktop last year.
Touchscreen laptops have been around for years. You can get them in all sizes and shapes. Just not from Apple. For years, the Cupertino giant has treated the idea of a touchscreen MacBook the way I treat a meeting that could have been an email: with open contempt. However, Wednesday looks like the day the company could finally change its mind.
The latest Apple invite puts the “Pro and Tell” showcase in Los Angeles at 10 a.m. PT (1 p.m. ET) on October 28, 2026. Instead of a regular live-streamed keynote, it is an invitation-only, hands-on event for a handful of press and creators (similar to what the company did for the MacBook Neo earlier this year).
Apple has just launched its latest iPad mini with a notable set of upgrades, including an OLED screen, improved speakers, and a more resilient build. It also gets a new chip, and the whole package costs $200 more than its predecessor. But if you look closely at Apple’s online store, you’ll realize that $699 isn’t enough to get you the most powerful version of the A20 Pro chip inside this tablet. In fact, even if you pay $800 for the 256GB model, you still won’t get the beefiest variant. Only when you jump to the 512GB trim, which costs an absurd $999, do you get the most powerful flavor of the A20 Pro.
The $999 model gets more than extra storage