Here’s how to turn on the Local Awareness option to ensure emergency alerts you receive on your iPhone from the government are more timely and accurate.
iOS 17.2 brings a new toggle for emergency alerts feature, labeled Local Awareness, that lets your iPhone use your approximate geographical location to improve the timeliness, accuracy and reliability of emergency alerts you receive.
“For example, earthquake alerts received on iPhone in California, Oregon and Washington (including bordering regions) might be more timely or delivered with increased accuracy when Local Awareness is turned on,” Apple explains.
How to turn on Local Awareness for Emergency Alerts
You can toggle the Local Awareness option in the Government Alerts section of your iPhone’s notification settings.
- Open the Settings app on your iPhone.
- Choose Notifications from the main list.
- Scroll down to the Government Alerts section and choose Emergency Alerts.
- Turn on the switch labeled Local Awareness.
Local Awareness is off by default | Image: Christian Zibreg/iDB
By default, the Local Awareness option is off. Keep in mind that this setting is only available in the United States. Furthermore, it’s only available on the iPhone with iOS 17.2 and later. Government alerts are unavailable on the iPad and Mac.
Managing government alerts on your iPhone
Government notifications like AMBER, Emergency and Public Safety alerts are notifications the government deems important enough for its citizens to know about. Because they can be pretty helpful, your iPhone supports these alerts out of the box.
But if you don’t think you’ll be using them any time soon, or find them annoying because you have more than one iPhone, you can always disable government alerts with a couple of toggle switches in the Settings app.