iOS 12 notifications not grouping? Here’s a fix

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iOS group notifications

The Group Notifications feature on iOS remains an inspired and handy system of receiving notifications and alerts on your phone. In a step or two you are able to address notifications from a particular app from your screen easily.

If you do not have Group Notifications on your iPhone, you would receive highly unorganized notifications, forcing you to sift through scattered alerts to find the relevant ones and discard the rest from a particular app.

However, some users report that, even with group notification on iOS 12 enabled, the still have to endure this disarray. This is the bug that this article will be addressing possible fixes to.

Enabling Group Notifications on iOS 12 for a particular app

Enjoying the clutter-free and organization benefits of Group notifications on iPhone is really straightforward and easy to implement. Just follow the steps outlined below:

  1. Navigate to ‘Settings’ on your iPhone
  2. Tap on the ‘Notification’ tab
  3. You will be presented a list of apps. Choose the app you want to be receiving the group notifications from.
  4. Tap on the ‘Notification Grouping’ tab
  5. Select ‘By app’ and you’re done! All the notifications and alerts for that particular app will be stacked as one.

It goes without saying but, if your notifications are not grouping on iOS 12, it would be worth rechecking if a particular app is set to receive grouped notifications using the steps above as well.

Fix iOS Grouped Notifications not working

If, however, your iOS 12 notifications still do not group, you can attempt either of the possible fixes below:

  1. Enable ‘Always Show Notifications’

This relatively simple fix has surprisingly been reported to work wonders in solving the grouped notifications glitch on iOS 12. You can attempt this fix by following the steps below:

  • Navigate to your ‘Settings’ and select ‘Notifications’
  • Tap on ‘Show Previews’, then choose the option ‘Always’.

And that’s it! Now a full preview of your alerts and notifications will be displayed directly on your lock screen. This is an obvious nuisance if you are an overly private person, but if you’re okay with your notifications on your lock screen, give this possible fix a go.

  1. Revert your group notifications settings to ‘Automatic’

Some users have actually reported fixing their group notifications on iPhone bug by reverting their settings back to ‘Automatic’. The steps are quite similar to the procedure followed in activating the feature per app. However, to recap, the steps are outlined as follows:

  • Navigate to ‘Settings’ > ‘Notifications’
  • Select a specific app that you want to activate group notifications for.
  • Tap on ‘Group Notifications’
  • Then finally tap on ‘Automatic’

While these steps directly contradict the steps to activating group notifications on iOS 12 for particular apps, it has been reported to work on various occasions (software bugs are weird).

  1. Set your ‘Date & Time’ settings to Automatic

You can also attempt to allow your time and date to be set automatically, which has been further reported to fix the issue on various iPhones (again, weird) by following the steps below:

  • Navigate to ‘General’ > ‘Settings’ > ‘Date & Time’ on your device
  • Tap on “Set Automatically”

  1. Initiate a Force-Restart

A force-restart is quite common as a cure-all for a lot of software glitches and bugs. You can force-restart your device by following the steps below:

For iPhone 6 and earlier

  • Press and hold the ‘Home’ button and the ‘Sleep/Wake’ button simultaneously until the Apple logo appears on-screen.

For iPhone 7 and 7 Plus

  • Press and hold the ‘Volume Down’ and ‘Sleep/Wake’ buttons for about 10 Seconds or until the Apple Logo appears.
  • Release the buttons and wait for your device to restart.

For iPhone 8 and iPhone X, XR and XS

  • Quickly press the ‘Volume Up’ and ‘Volume Down’ keys simultaneously.
  • Press and hold the side key until the Apple logo appears.
  • Your device will restart

  1. Reset all your Settings

As a final Hail-Mary move to be attempted if all the above procedures to fix your group notifications on iPhone glitch fail, you can attempt resetting all your iOS settings. To do so, follow the steps below:

  • Navigate to ‘Settings’ > ‘General’
  • Tap ‘Reset’
  • Select ‘Reset all Settings’
  • Verify your phone passcode.
  • Select ‘Reset all Settings’

Your iPhone settings will all be reset, in the process hopefully solving the grouped notifications issue along with it.

Hopefully, this article on how to fix the grouped notifications on iOS 12 error has been helpful on getting you back to the clutter-free and organized life of grouped notifications on your iPhone. If you enjoyed the article, be sure to check out some of our other guides, walkthroughs, tips and tricks on all things iOS related on the site.