Disclaimer: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning we get a small commission if you make a purchase through our links, at no cost to you. For more information, please visit our Disclaimer Page.
When you unlock your iPhone, the notifications on the lock screen usually disappear to stay in the Notifications Center. You can prevent this from happening by setting the notifications as persistent from your settings if that’s what you’re after.
Table of Contents
Do Notifications Disappear when You Unlock an iPhone
Managing notifications in iOS can be quite tricky. Most times, everything doesn’t work the way you want them to, and there’s usually no way to make them. Notifications seem to disappear once you unlock your iPhone, but is that really the case?
By default, all new notifications on iOS will appear on the phone’s lock screen. However, these notifications will disappear from the lock screen once you unlock the phone, but they’ll still stay in the Notification Centre until you act on them or clear them away.
Typically, iPhones don’t offer a functionality to let you keep notifications on the lock screen after unlocking your iPhone. Also, that’s not supposed to be a problem, unless in specific circumstances, which are mostly illegal.
However, if the problem is your notifications disappearing completely, then you can try some workaround. iPhone notification problems aren’t very rare, and the chances are high that you’re here due to one.
But if you want to keep certain notifications on your lock screen for almost forever, you can set them as a persistent notification. If a notification is set to be persistent, they don’t go away, regardless of the number of times you unlock your iPhone.
If notifications on your iPhone aren’t persistent by default, it’s not a bug. iOS doesn’t allow apps to make their notifications persistent by default unless you set it to be so specific.
Throughout this article, you’ll learn how to make your iPhone lock screen notifications persistent and some other clever iOS lock screen notification tips to make your lock screen far more productive.
How to Enable Persistent Notifications on Your iPhone
If you want to keep notifications on your lock screen regardless of how many times you unlock your phone, you may want to consider enabling persistent notifications.
A fair warning before enabling it is that it may become more persistent than you like. If you think the persistent notifications are way too persistent for your liking, I’ll also show you how to disable the feature, reverting to iOS’s default way of handling notifications for the app.
Unfortunately, if you’re looking at a notification that you don’t want gone, it will go away once you unlock your iPhone. However, subsequent notifications will follow the persistent notifications rule, which makes it impractical for certain situations.
If persistent notifications seem like the perfect solution to your problem, follow the steps below to keep your chosen notifications on your iPhone’s lock screen.
Open the setting app on your iPhone.
Your iPhone’s setting app is represented by a grey gear icon labelled “Settings” on your iPhone. If you’ve used your iPhone for more than a week, you should already know where to find your settings app.
Tap on the app’s icon to open the app before moving on to the next step in this guide.
Select notifications and select the app.
Once you’re in the settings app, scroll down until you find “Notifications.” This option will let you modify the notification settings for most of the apps on your iPhone. However, you can only do this for individual apps.
Before proceeding to the next step, you’ll need to select the specific app that you want all of its notifications to be persistent. Persistent notifications work best for instant messaging apps, as they let you reply to messages without unlocking your phone.
Enable persistent notifications.
Once you’re in the notification settings for the app, you can change the form of the notifications you receive from temporary to persistent.
To do this, you’ll need to scroll to the section where you’ll see three phones side by side. There, you will see Banner Style and next to it is temporary or persistent. Tap on persistent. You may not notice any differences at first, but soon enough, you’ll see apparent differences.
Frankly, you don’t want to turn on persistent notifications for all of your apps at once. Even if you’re going to for some reason, iOS doesn’t offer a feature for that, so you’ll have to keep doing it for each individual app.
If this fix doesn’t solve the problem, you may want to continue reading the article for alternate solutions that may apply to you specifically.
How to Fix Notifications Disappearing from iPhone Lock Screen
If your notifications just seem to disappear randomly, the guide above can only do so much. While that teaches you how to keep notifications on your iPhone’s home screen for a long time, it doesn’t solve any problems with the notifications themselves.
If your notifications appear to be disappearing without your input, here are some of the best suggestions to help solve this problem.
Restart your iPhone.
Whenever you encounter a bug with your device, the first step should be restarting the phone. While it may seem like a ridiculously simple (yet annoying) task, it works wonders and could be the solution to your problem.
There are many different ways to restart an iPhone, depending on the specific model you’re using. Most recent iPhones will only require you to long-press the power and volume buttons at once to turn off your device. You can then turn it on to complete the restart.
If that doesn’t work, you may be using an older iPhone. In this case, you’ll have to press down your power button (only) until the power slider appears. The rest of the steps are pretty much the same.
If restarting your iPhone doesn’t work, you may want to get somewhat technical by trying some more advanced fixes.
Turn off “Do not Disturb.”
Another mistake most people make when they claim their notifications are not appearing is that they have Do not Disturb turned on. Since this mode literally doesn’t want to disturb you, it will prevent your iPhone from bugging you with notifications.
If you can swear you got a notification with Do not Disturb mode turned on, maybe you did. Alarms, calls, and texts from your favourite contacts will all break through your Do not Disturb instruction.
If you want to keep Do Not Disturb turned on, you have two options. It’s either you receive no notifications, or you don’t use Do not Disturb at all. You usually don’t have it both ways.
Another workaround would be to set your favourite apps to keep notifications on the lock screen. If you can take the pains to do that, why not simply turn off Do not Disturb altogether?
Choose your preferred notifications type.
An iPhone lets you customise your notifications to meet your preferences. If you think your notifications are a bug, it’s mostly because you’ve customised it badly.
Fortunately, you can get back into your notification settings and tweak them until it works well for you again. You can try changing from banner notifications to full screen, and you can also alternate between temporary and persistent notifications.
With a bit of tweaking, trial, and error, you can modify your iPhone’s lock screen to look exactly like you want if your wants aren’t out of reach. You’ll be surprised at how soon you’ll get used to using notifications on your iPhone.
If iOS’s system of handling notifications doesn’t look intuitive to you, you might want to try out an Android phone. Reviewers have praised Android’s notification handling over that of iPhones, but I doubt that should be a deal-breaker.