Set Up Notifications
What a Calendar or Reminders notification looks like on your Mac, iPhone, iPad, or Apple Watch depends on each device’s Notifications settings. In addition, whether a notification appears in Notification Center depends on the settings. Let’s take a quick look at how you can make your Notifications settings work best for you.
Notifications on Your Mac
What your notifications ultimately look like—and sound like—depends on the settings in Apple > System Preferences > Notifications. After you open this pane, select Calendar or Reminders in the list on the left to view your options on the right. Figure 106 shows the Calendar options, but your choices are identical if you’ve selected Reminders.
By default, both Calendar and Reminders notifications are alert style; in other words, they require that you dismiss them, making it difficult to overlook one. You can, however, change that so a banner appears and then disappears—you catch it or you don’t.
Other settings here include:
Show notifications on lock screen: Select this to see the app’s notifications on the Lock screen before you log in to your Mac.
Show notification preview: From this pop-up menu, choose “always” if you don’t mind anyone seeing your event or reminder previews. Alternatively, choose “when unlocked” to show these only when you’ve logged into your Mac.
Show in Notification Center: Make sure this is selected if you want to see recent notifications from the app in Check Notification Center on a Mac.
Badge app icon: Select this to see how many notifications are pending by looking for a red badge on the app’s icon in the Dock.
Play sound for notifications: Select this to make your notification include a sound. Typically it’s Basso, but you can change that in Apple > System Preferences > Sound > Sound Effects. If you’d prefer that your Mac be quiet, make sure this box is deselected.
Notifications on Your iPhone and iPad
Your iPhone or iPad has its own settings that affect how notifications display on it. For any notification trigger, such as a calendar event giving you a 5-minute warning or a scheduled reminder coming due, you can generally get as many as three alerts, as follows:
Sound: A sound plays when the notification is triggered.
Banner: Banners can appear on your device’s Lock Screen, in Notification Center, or at the top of your screen.
Badges: Turn this on and a red badge containing a number appears on the Calendar icon in the Home screen; it shows how many notifications you have.
iPhone and iPad Calendar Notifications
To set your Calendar notifications, tap Settings > Notifications and select Calendar (Figure 107).
Tap a category of notification trigger, such as Upcoming Events, to see its notification options. To change a category’s notifications, tap it and adjust the switches as follows:
Allow Notifications: Toggle this on if you want this category to include notifications.
Alerts: Choose from three types of alerts:
Lock Screen: Turn this on to see alerts on the Lock screen. These can be easy to overlook, so don’t rely on them.
Notification Center: To see Calendar notifications in your device’s Notification Center, turn this on. (Flip back to Notification Center on an iPhone or iPad for more.)
Banners: Banners appear at the top of your screen, regardless of what you’re doing on your device.
Banner Style: If you set the Banner Style to Persistent, the notification stays on screen until you dismiss it. This is helpful when you don’t want to miss something. However, if you don’t mind if the notifications appear and then disappear, set the Banner Style to Temporary. Use this for lower-priority notifications that you don’t mind missing if you’ve set your device down.
Sounds: You have your choice of 13 built-in alert tones and 29 ringtones here. Tap one for a preview. Tap Tone Store to browse (and possibly purchase) ringtones galore or choose from movie and television-themed sounds like Chewbacca’s Roar and a Despicable Me Minion Laugh.
Badges: Turn this on to see a red badge on the Home screen Calendar icon that indicates how many notifications you have.
What you see with iPhone and iPad Calendar alerts is what you get. You can’t create a custom alert for a particular event, as you can on a Mac, to override default settings.
Reminders Notifications
Reminders notifications on an iPhone or iPad the same way as those in Calendar, described just above. Tap Settings > Notifications > Reminders to see a screen exactly like the one shown on the right in Figure 107, above. Consider picking a different alert sound or vibration (if you use one) for your Reminders alerts to help distinguish them immediately from Calendar’s.
Notifications on the Apple Watch
To set up a Watch’s notifications, open the Watch app on your iPhone and tap Notifications > Calendar or Notifications > Reminders. By default, the Watch uses your iPhone’s settings for the Calendar app and the Reminders app (Figure 108).
If you prefer, tap Custom and choose different notification settings for the Watch. For instance, you may want to feel a tap on your wrist (haptic) rather than a sound for upcoming events.