With iOS 15, users could temporarily mute notifications for an hour or a whole day on a per-app basis. This feature is beyond useful especially when dealing with annoying alerts, like those annoying Snapchat notifications that you’ll probably want to mute.
A quick left swipe followed by Options and you are already there. A much simpler, faster, and more nuanced way to mute notifications on your iPhone. However, what happens if you want to unmute notifications on your iPhone but you can’t find them? Some iPhone users were wondering the same. We gave our best to explain.
This might look like an oversight on Apple’s side but we imagine the idea was to localize this temporary Mute option to Notification Center. You can still mute notifications for all apps indefinitely in Settings > Notifications.
How to unsilence notifications on iPhone?
If you haven’t dismissed or opened a notification (or group of notifications from the same app), you can unmute it from the Notification Center. Just bring up the Lock Screen and swipe up with one finger to expand the Notification Center. If you swipe left on the notification and open Options, you should see the Unmute button. Just tap on it to unmute notifications for that particular app.
However, there’s a problem if you muted a notification for 1 hour or today and you then dismissed or opened the notification. Since these actions remove notifications from Notification Center, you won’t be able to access Options > Unmute anymore.
It’s not possible to unmute notifications anywhere else and roaming through notification settings won’t lend any results. Sadly, there’s still no way to see old notifications you dismissed or opened on your iPhone. Something like Notification History that’s available on Android would be a welcome addition to iOS.
So, what are your options? The only one that comes to mind is to wait for a new notification from that app and then Unmute it from Notification Center. It can speed things up if you have a way to do it yourself. Keep in mind that muted notifications won’t ring or stay on the Lock Screen, and you need to access Notification Center to see them. So, a quick one-finger swipe on the Lock Screen should bring up the Notification Center, and, from there, you can mute or unmute all notifications.
How to unmute iMessage notifications on your iPhone
Unlike some other third-party apps, iPhone Messages allows you to mute notifications for each contact or group (conversation). This caused havoc among iPhone users, as many of them didn’t know how to properly silence contacts, which caused the “Notifications silenced” message in iMessage, to appear for millions of users.
You can mute notifications in the messages list if you swipe left and tap on the bell icon. Now, this can be a bit confusing because the Mute/Unmute Bell icon shows the alternate setting.
So, if you see the Bell icon with a slash across, the notifications are not muted. If you see that the Bell icon is without a slash, the notifications are muted and you won’t be notified about incoming messages. A bit counterintuitive but you get used to it. If your iPhone is still not making a sound for text messages, you should find additional settings in Settings > Messages > Notifications. You can unmute message notifications on your iPhone there.
Bonus: Disable Do Not Disturb mode
Having the Do Not Disturb mode or any other Focus mode on will also mute the incoming notifications. Although you can set up calls from certain contacts to ring when the Do Not Disturb mode is on, and the alarms will still go off, the majority of notifications won’t make it. So, if you notice that your notifications are still muted, make sure to head over to the Control Center and disable the Do Not Disturb mode.
And, on that note, we can conclude this article. Thank you for reading and feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below.
Editor’s note: This article was initially published in July 2022. We made sure to revamp it for freshness and accuracy.
FAQ
Why is my notification sound not working?
There are multiple reasons why the notification sound is not working on your iPhone. First, make sure that the Silent switch is disabled. Also, disable the Do Not Disturb and Focus modes. After that, open Settings > Sound & Haptics and make sure that the Ringtone and Alert Volume are not too low. If nothing helps, just go to Settings > General > Transfer or Reset iPhone > Reset and Reset All Settings on your iPhone.
