iOS 16.2 fixes iPhone notifications, but not on the lock screen

Apple made a significant change to the iPhone experience this year by introducing the customizable Lock Screen in iOS 16. This forced Apple to change how notifications work on the Lock Screen and in the Notification Center. Unfortunately, the resulting iPhone notifications experience could be better, especially for less savvy iPhone users still expecting the old notification experience.

The good news is that Apple is looking to fix notifications on iPhone via the iOS 16.2 update. The notifications display should change in the Notification Center, making it less likely for you to miss important notifications.

The new notification update is available to test in iOS 16.2 beta if you want to install it on your devices. First detailed by MacRumors, the notifications change will ensure that users see older items in Notification Center.

Right now, iOS 16 doesn’t display older notifications in Notification Center, as was the case with iOS 15. You have to swipe up from the middle to see them. This isn’t necessarily a problem, but tons of iPhone users have been freaking out about it on Reddit and social media sites.

The issue stems from how iOS 16 handles notifications in general.

Say a new notification hits the Lock Screen, but the user doesn’t interact with it. After locking and unlocking the screen, that notification will be relegated to the Notifications Center. As a result, some iPhone users might miss out on important notifications, especially if they haven’t yet gotten used to the iOS 16 Lock Screen and notifications experience.

The good news is that iOS 16.2 will fix the notifications experience for the Notification Center. Older items will appear in the list of notifications without requiring additional swipes. But this happens only in Notification Center.

An even better notifications fix would be applying the same logic to the Lock Screen. But the Lock Screen lacks the real estate available in the Notification Center. That’s because of all the widgets you might be using on the Lock Screen.

As a reminder, you can access the iPhone’s Notification Center by swiping down on the left side of the screen after you’ve unlocked the handset.

You can now test iOS 16.2 beta 4 and experience the new features. However, there’s no telling whether Apple will include the change in the final iOS 16.2 release.

More iPhone coverage: For more iPhone news, visit our iPhone 14 guide.