How to avoid unwanted alerts in iOS 5

Avoid embarrassing interruptions from unexpected iPhone alerts by following this guide to configuring iOS 5’s notification settings.

Mobile phone alerts have been interrupting public performances since, well, since mobile phones were invented. Rather than mere rudeness though, some recent incidents seem to be the result of confusion about how modern smartphones work — or at least that was the excuse given by the iPhone owner who stopped a performance of Mahler’s Symphony No. 9 by the New York Philharmonic in the middle of January.

In fact there is some genuine confusion about how the iPhone in particular handles alarms and audible alerts, not least since Apple’s recent iOS 5 update added a new layer of complexity in the form of the Notification Centre.

So, with Apple iDevices making increasing inroads into enterprise, we thought this would be a good time to explain how to configure iOS 5 to keep unwanted interruptions to a minimum.

1. The iPhone mute switch It’s important to note that the iPhone’s side-mounted mute switch only affects ring tone, text message, email and other app alerts — it does not affect alarms set in the Clock app.

This is by design, the reason being that iPhone owners who do not want to be disturbed by a phone call or other alert when they’re sleeping may still want to be woken up by its alarm.

An iPhone set to mute will still vibrate when alert is triggered, but if even this is too much of a distraction, it can be disabled in Settings > Sounds. Just set the Vibrate option to Off under the Silent section.

2. What the volume buttons do The ringer volume can also be set here, as can the option for the iPhone to vibrate even when not in mute mode, which can be a useful way to avoid missing a call if the ringer volume is at its lowest setting or muffled by a pocket.

Otherwise, ringer volume is controlled using Up/Down buttons on the side of the iPhone, but these only take effect when music or video isn’t playing, or an app that has audio feedback (such as a game) isn’t running. Otherwise, the buttons control the volume of the app in question.

It’s also worth noting that the volume buttons also only adjust ringer volume when the iPhone is unlocked and they have no effect if the lock screen is still visible, or the screen is off.

3. Silencing alerts for certain contacts Although the iPhone mute switch doesn’t affect its alarms, some people still prefer to leave it switched on when they’re sleeping for emergency contact purposes.

The problem, of course, is what constitutes an emergency and a text message balance update update sent by a bank at 6.30am on a Monday morning probably doesn’t qualify.

Fortunately, iOS 5 offers a way to silence audible alerts for certain contacts to prevent exactly this sort of thing from happening. This is done by editing the contact’s details via Phone > Contacts > -select contact- > Edit, then changing the ringtone and/or text tone to “None”.

4. Understanding the Notification Centre iOS alerts used to consist of a single pop-up message in the middle of the screen that was supplanted when another alert was received. iOS 5 remedies this by not only offering different ways to stack multiple ‘notifications’ (as they’re now called) on-screen as they’re received, but also by saving all recent alerts on a pull-down window called the Notification Centre.

When an app that can generate a notification (be it a pop-up message, app icon badge or sound) is installed, it should request approval before configuring itself to do so, but this is easily overlooked.

So, it’s a good idea to check notification settings every once in a while in case an app has snuck through, and also to properly configure any wanted app notifications to minimise their potential disruption,

When opened via Settings > Notifications, a list of apps that use notifications appears. This is split into two groups: apps that are actively using notifications and those that can, but have been disabled.

5. Notification Setting settings There’s also the option here to sort notifications in the Notification Centre either by the time they’re received or in a manually chosen app order, with the latter option edited using the Edit button at the top-right of this screen.

Tap any app entry in the list and its notification settings appear. Some apps will simply offer an On/Off toggle, but most have more granular settings. Most of these are self-explanatory, but the one to pay attention to is “Sounds” and this is worth setting to “Off” if you don’t want audible notification of your turn in Words with Friends, for example.

6. Improving alert security The “View in Lock Screen” setting is also worth checking, particularly for iOS devices that are used for personally or commercially sensitive communication. When set to On for the Mail or Messages apps, for example, new emails and text messages will be partially visible to anyone on the iOS Lock screen, even if the iDevice is protected with a password.

So, once properly configured, there should be little chance of an iOS 5 from causing unwanted interruptions, but we can’t say the same for mobile phones from other manufacturers…