Fix: iOS 16 / iOS 16.6 Not Showing Notifications on Lock Screen

Suppose you are busy doing something, but your iPhone keeps sending alerts. Rather than unlocking the phone and opening the Control Centre, you can quickly see your messages and alerts from the lock screen. It is a helpful feature, but some iOS users are happy. They say the notifications are not on the lock screen in iOS 16 or iOS 16.6.

When the lock screen notifications do not show up, you may have to unlock the screen every time you receive a notification alert. This could be frustrating and could cost you a lot of time. Fortunately, you won’t have to go through this as we have several effective solutions to fix it.

Reasons Why Lock Screen Notifications Are Not Showing on Your iPhone

Software Bugs/Glitches: Your iPhone is prone to software bugs and glitches, which could be causing issues with the notifications on the lock screen. Try restarting your phone. If it does not work, you will need to update your iPhone.
Lock Screen Notifications Are Disabled for the App: If you are not getting lock screen notifications from a particular app, the app is not allowed to send this type of notification. You can easily enable it. We have shared all the steps in the solutions.
Notification Centre Is Disabled: The notifications won’t appear when you swipe up from the middle of the lock screen if the Notification Centre is disabled.
Notification Summary Is Causing Delay: It is a great feature to stop your iPhone from buzzing all day. However, it can cause a delay in notifications, and you won’t receive them as they arrive on your phone.
Low Power Mode and Low Data Mode: While the low power mode kills some background processes, the low data mode reduces data consumption in the background. Both can result in delayed notifications.
Background App Refresh Is Disabled: Apps keep refreshing in the background to check for new content. If you disable background app refresh, they won’t be able to perform this operation and won’t send you any notifications.
DND Is Turned On: When Do Not Disturb (DND) is turned on, you won’t receive notifications.

Your phone is most likely to have been affected by any of the aforementioned reasons. If you have found the culprit, go to the corresponding solution. Otherwise, try the solutions one by one until the problem is fixed.

2. Turn Off DND

All iPhones have the Do Not Disturb (DND) mode to help you focus on something else. When it is enabled, you won’t receive any notifications on your iPhone.

On your iPhone, you can set Do Not Disturb (DND) to turn on/off at a specific time on each day. If you have scheduled DND, turn it off to start receiving notifications all day.

Here are the steps you need to follow:

Open the “Settings” app on your iPhone.
Scroll down to “Focus” and tap on it.
Tap on “Do Not Disturb”.
Under “SET A SCHEDULE”, check if you have a schedule for DND. If you have one, tap on it.
Turn off the toggle to disable this schedule. Or, you can delete it by tapping on “Delete Schedule”. If you have multiple DND schedules, disable or delete all of them.

After disabling the DND schedule(s), check if your phone can show notifications on the lock screen.

3. Check if Lock Screen Notifications Are Disabled for the App

If you are not getting lock screen notifications from a particular app, there’s a good chance that the app is not allowed to do so. Follow these steps to check if an app can send alerts on the lock screen:

Open the “Settings” app.
Go to “Notifications”.
Select the app which is not sending lock screen notifications.
Under “ALERTS”, tick the “Lock Screen” option.

You should now start receiving lock screen notifications from this app. If the Lock Screen option was enabled already but still not getting notifications, you need to try other solutions as well.

4. Enable Notification Centre

If you are still unable to see notifications on the lock screen, check if the Notification Centre is disabled.

Here are the steps to follow:

Launch the “Settings” app.
Scroll down to “Face ID & Passcode” and tap on it.
Enter your passcode.
Under “ALLOW ACCESS WHEN LOCKED”, make sure the “Notification Centre” option is enabled. Turn it on if it isn’t already.

5. Disable Notification Summary

If you get a lot of notifications on your iPhone throughout the day, Notification Summary could be very helpful. It intelligently (through the use of machine learning) provides you with a summary of less important notifications at specified times. Although it keeps your iPhone from ringing all day, you may get delayed notifications.

Here’s how to turn it off:

Launch the “Settings” app and go to “Notifications”.
Tap on “Scheduled Summary”.
From this screen, you can disable “Scheduled Summary”.

6. Enable Background App Refresh

How do you get notifications from apps even when you are not using them? The answer is background app refresh. Even when you are not using them, they keep fetching the latest data in the background. If you are getting lock screen notifications, probably the Background App Refresh option is turned off. It can save battery but apps may not be able to fetch new data.

Steps to disable background app refresh on iPhone:

Open the “Settings” app.
Go to “General” and tap on “Background App Refresh”.
Turn on the toggle next to apps that are important for you.

7. Turn Off Low Data Mode and Low Power Mode

If you have turned on Low Power Mode, your iPhone may kill apps running in the background in order to save the battery. It can cause issues with notifications on the lock screen. Disabling the Low Power Mode can fix this issue.

Launch the “Settings” apps.
Tap on the “Battery” option.
Toggle off the switch next to “Low Power Mode”.

If it does not fix the lock screen notification issues, check if the Low Data Mode is turned on. When this option is turned off, the apps may not sync properly.

Steps to turn off Low Data Mode:

On your iPhone, open the “Settings” app.
Tap on “Wi-Fi”.
Click the “info icon” next to the connected Wi-Fi network.
Turn off “Low Data Mode”.

If you are using mobile data, here are the steps to follow:

Open the “Settings” app and go to “Mobile Data”.
Click “Mobile Data Options”.
Toggle off the switch next to “Low Data Mode”.

8. Update Apps on Your iPhone

If lock screen notifications are still not showing up from specific app(s), you need to update them. Probably, the app has bugs causing issues with lock screen notifications. Updating the app to its latest version might fix the bug.

To update an app, launch the App Store, search for the app, and click the “Update” button.

9. Update Your iPhone

Apple regularly pushes new iOS updates to improve the device. In addition to improvements and new features, it also includes bug fixing. You should therefore keep your iPhone updated all the time.

Here’s how to update your iPhone:

Launch the “Settings” app and go to “General”.
Tap on “Software Update”.
Download and install pending software updates.

Wrapping It Up

Apple is constantly making improvements to make the lock screen notifications look better. iOS 16 stacks the notifications at the bottom, which gives the lock screen a cleaner look. Despite the improvements, there are times when the lock screen notifications do not show up at all. Thankfully, there are a couple of ways to fix it that we just went through in this guide. Please let us know which one of the above solutions worked for you in the comment section below.