What's new with iOS 8's Notification Center
Apple (AAPL) has always treated notifications like something of an afterthought on the iPhone. But with its latest mobile operating system, and despite the platform's early stumbles, the company has finally introduced a powerful set of tools for handling notifications.
It's taken a long time. Apple didn't even include push notifications for third-party applications at all until the third major version of iOS. Later, iOS 5 finally introduced a centralized location for reviewing notifications -- it's so-called Notification Center. The Notification Center aggregates messages from various apps and allowed you to clear them with a tap. The Notification Center also introduced iPhone users to what are sometimes called Ambient Information, which allowed you to see the weather and selected stock info from the same display. This is the Notification Center that most of us know, which we've been using for several years.
But one of the less well known updates to iOS last week is a significant redesign to the Notification Center. If you haven't spent any time with it yet, you might be pleasantly surprised to see what's waiting for you there.
The most obvious update is interactivity. Many notifications are actionable now, depending upon the app that owns the message. For example, you can respond to text messages right in the Notification Center just by swiping. Email can be deleted or marked as read without visiting your inbox.
But there's an even bigger change waiting in the Notification Center's Today tab: widgets. Widgets are simple apps that live in the Notification Center and extend the Ambient Information that Apple first rolled out back in iOS 5. Rather than only seeing weather and stocks in the Notification Center, you can now put anything you like in there -- at least, any app that supports the Notification Center. And it's genuinely useful. Armed with the right widgets, you can get all the information you need to start your day without ever unlocking your phone or visiting several apps in sequence.
To try this out, pull down the Notification Center and switch to the Today tab. At the bottom of the screen, tap the new Edit button (your phone needs to be unlocked in order to see this). Here's you'll find the installed widgets -- which you can rearrange or remove -- as well as a list of widgets offered by iOS 8-compatible apps that you can add to the Today screen.
There are a wide range of widgets. BuzzFeed's widget, for example, shows a featured article that you can bookmark or open in the BuzzFeed app, or pass on to see the next offering. Perhaps not a compelling business application. Then again, neither is LinkedIn's app, which puts "who's viewed you" in the Notification Center.
More useful: OpenTable displays your upcoming reservations. Kindle shows where you are in the book you're currently reading, and takes you there with a tap. Dropbox shows recently added files, and will open any of them as well. Even some pretty specialized apps have widgets. If you have the Netatmo weather station (which displays indoor and outdoor weather on your iPhone), for instance, you can get the app's hyperlocal weather report here.
There are already dozens of apps that support widgets. Others to consider: Evernote, Yahoo News Digest, WorldMate (which displays your travel itinerary), and Hours (a time management app). And these just scratch the surface. As you explore widgets, the real challenge might be pruning them down to a manageable number, so your Notification Center stays lean and useful.
