Notifications

Facebook bringing order to notification hell with revamped Notifications tab in mobile app

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 28, 2019

After seemingly neglecting its outdated notification system for years, Facebook today announced a revamp and new features for the Notifications tab in its mobile application.

Hopefully, this'll help us cope with a firehouse of alerts from Facebook that we're being inundated with on any given day.

A more useful, Google Now-like Notifications tab now distinguishes clearly between Facebook's most important notification types.

Specifically, you'll see timely alerts for friends’ milestones, birthdays and life events, upcoming events that you’ve joined and sports scores and TV reminders, the latter two based on Pages you’ve liked.

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iOS 9.1 enables quick-replying from notifications in WhatsApp for iPhone

Christian Zibreg ∙ October 22, 2015

At long last, iOS is allowing app makers to implement text replies in notifications, a feature Apple used to reserve exclusively for its Messages app.

Twitter was the first App Store app to gain this great time-saver of a feature. On iOS 9.1, WhatsApp for iPhone now supports a handy text field for quickly replying to incoming messages without leaving the app you're currently using.

This feature requires an iPhone with iOS 9.1 or later.

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How to get notified when we post a new YouTube video

Jeff Benjamin ∙ Updated June 13, 2018

As a part of yesterday's YouTube app update for iOS, it is now possible to receive a push notification whenever we post a new video on iDownloadBlog's YouTube channel.

Each week, we post several videos about jailbreaking, the latest Cydia tips, tricks, tips, reviews, and more. iDB's YouTube channel is a great source for the latest information on all things Apple, jailbreaking, iOS, and the iPhone and iPad.

With this latest update, it's even easier to stay up to date with all of our new video content. In this post, we'll show you how to do just that.

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How to get Apple Watch-styled Lock screen notifications on your iPhone

Jeff Benjamin ∙ Updated May 7, 2018

WatchNotifications is a brand new jailbreak tweak from developer Thomas Finch, that seeks to better unify the look of notifications on Apple Watch and iPhone. It does this by mimicking the look of Apple Watch notifications on your iPhone's Lock screen.

Available for $1.00 on Cydia's BigBoss repo, if you prefer the look of the notifications on your Apple Watch, then you'll most certainly be interested in WatchNotifications.

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Notifications for Reddit provides message alerts in real time

Timothy Reavis ∙ Updated April 18, 2018

I've always wondered why popular Reddit clients such as Alien Blue and Narwhal don't support push notifications for various alerts. Not being a heavy redditor myself, replies to my comments will often go unnoticed until the next time I open a Reddit client, and that might take a few days, which sometimes proves to be inconvenient. However, Notifications for Reddit is a recently-launched solution.

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New tweak brings iOS notifications to Xiaomi’s Mi Band

Jeff Benjamin ∙ Updated April 18, 2018

XiaoMi's recently launched US online store doesn't carry any actual smartphone hardware yet, but you can buy hardware like headphones, battery packs, and a fitness device called the Mi Band.

The Mi Band is akin to some FitBit models, in that it's slim, understated, and lacks a touch screen. Due to the tracker's lack of battery draining features, it gets really good battery life upwards of 30 days.

Perhaps the most attractive thing about the Mi Band is the price. Retailing for just $14.99, it's much more affordable than any dedicated fitness tracker I've ever seen, let alone a full-featured device like the Apple Watch.

When paired with a Xiaomi smartphone, the Mi Band can alert you to things like phone calls by using vibration. Wouldn't it be cool if it could alert you to notifications for certain iOS apps as well? Now it can, courtesy of a new jailbreak tweak called MiBand Utility from developer Pigi Galdi.

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IllLookLater: prevent iPhone screen wake when receiving notifications

Jeff Benjamin ∙ May 24, 2015

Do you find that many of your incoming notifications don't warrant the awakening of the Lock screen on your iPhone? Perhaps you think that waking up your iPhone every time you receive a notification is a waste of precious battery.

If you feel that way, then you may want to look into IllLookLater, a recent jailbreak tweak that's available on Cydia's BigBoss repo free of charge. IllLookLater makes it so that you can limit the amount of apps that wake the Lock screen when receiving a notification. In other words, it lets you pick and choose the apps that you deem worthy.

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NotiAction: launch Activator actions based on notification keywords

Jeff Benjamin ∙ Updated April 18, 2018

NotiAction is an innovative new jailbreak tweak that does something particularly cool—it lets you launch any Activator action by means of keywords found in incoming iOS notifications. You can designate up to 10 keywords with wildcards in the tweak's settings, and allow NotiAction to listen for those particular keywords. If a valid keyword is found, then the corresponding Activator action is automatically launched. Have a look at our video walkthrough for a demonstration of NotiAction.

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