Although some people believe Android has better notification management than iOS, Apple has one trick up its sleeve to make Android fans envious; that trick is Scheduled Summary. Announced with iOS 15 in 2021, Scheduled Summary combines notifications from selected apps and shares them with users at set intervals. After using it for over a year, we feel it's the best feature Android should steal from iOS.

What is Scheduled Summary on iPhone?

Before we talk about how Google can adopt Scheduled Summary on Android, let's shed some more details on Apple's neat notification management. Scheduled Summary (also known as Notification Summary) allows users to bundle non-urgent alerts from apps (that don't require immediate attention) and receive them in summary at convenient times. It is helpful if you have a busy routine and free time only at lunch, during evening subway rides, and at night.

Suppose you are busy in daily meetings from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. In that case, you can set to receive the first notification summary at 1:10 p.m. Similarly, you can schedule a second summary during a ride back home at 7 p.m. and a third one before going to bed at 11 p.m. The system no longer bombards you with unnecessary alerts throughout the day, and you have better control over how you want to receive notifications from specific apps.

How is Scheduled Summary different from Do Not Disturb?

You may wonder how iPhone's Scheduled Summary differs from a DND (do not disturb) mode on Android. Along with app notifications, a standard DND mode restricts calls, alarms, media sounds, and touch sounds on your phone. You can always customize your DND experience on Android with exceptions for selected apps and contacts, but the whole setup can be time-consuming for some. Scheduled Summary focuses on app notifications only, and it is quick to set up and offers better flexibility over app alerts.

You can add regular intervals to receive notification summaries throughout the day. If you aren't sure about which apps to add in a Scheduled Summary, iOS shows a weekly notification average from every installed app on your iPhone. You can review a list of apps keeping your phone's notification center busy.

You can see Mint (a news app), Outlook, LinkedIn, and other messaging apps topping the weekly notification average chart on the iPhone shown below. Apart from instant messaging apps like WhatsApp, Apple Messages, or Slack, most people do not need to interact with other app notifications as soon as they appear.

To help you focus on your work and avoid distractions during work hours, you can add news, bank, shopping, and email apps in Scheduled Summary and set convenient intervals such as 8 a.m., 2 p.m., and 11 p.m. to receive a notification summary. If you're worried about missing an important notification, you can enable the Show Next Summary toggle to check the following summary in Notification Centre before the scheduled time.

What should Android's take on Scheduled Summary look like?

Android already offers robust notification management with priority conversations, snooze to delay an alert, notification history, notification categories, and bubbles. Google can smartly integrate Scheduled Summary with existing notification features.

For example, when you receive a notification summary and are still busy, Android's snooze option can come in handy and delay the summary by 30 minutes or one hour. You can also choose to receive a notification summary in bubble style to keep it separate from other app alerts in the phone's notification center.

An phone sits on a gray back ground with the Now Playing in Android 13 displayed.

Google can integrate Scheduled Summary with notification categories to offer greater control over the types of notifications to include in a summary. Instead of adding an app to a Scheduled Summary, you can choose different app notification categories. For example, you can add WhatsApp group messages, Facebook comments, birthday reminders, friend requests, web alerts (something that iOS still lacks) from selected websites, or a specific email account in Gmail to a summary and receive those notifications later.

iOS doesn't have notification categories to offer such control in a notification summary. When you add Gmail in Scheduled Summary, iOS will delay notifications from all added email accounts. You don't have an option to receive real-time work email alerts. Similarly, you can't set your preferred news app to send breaking news alerts in real time and keep other notification types in a Scheduled Summary. Google can overcome all Scheduled Summary limitations with a better implementation on Android.

Do you really need to see that Facebook notification now?

We have become tethered to our smartphones, and Scheduled Summary is one way that helps temper our need for instant gratification. We hope to see Google taking some inspiration from iOS Scheduled Summary in Android 14. If you're looking to put some distance between you and your tech, check out Android's Digitial Wellbeing feature.