When you tap a notification in the notification center in iOS, it opens the app the notification is from. The notification is then removed from the notification center. If you ever needed to go back to an old notification, there was no way to do that. Not until iOS 11 anyway. iOS 11 has a new feature called the ‘Cover Sheet’. It’s a part of the notification center so you might not even consider it a new feature but it is there. The cover sheet can show you older notifications. To view the cover sheet, open the notification center and then swipe up on it from the middle of your screen. These are usually notifications from the previous day or earlier in the day. You may or may not like this feature. The good news is, you can hide app notifications from the cover sheet.
Open the Settings app and go to Notifications. Only apps that are allowed to show you notifications appear in the Cover Sheet. Select an app that’s showing in the Cover Sheet on the Notifications screen in the Settings app.
Scroll down to the ‘Alerts’ section. Turn off the ‘Show on Cover Sheet’ option to hide app notifications from the Cover Sheet. The change will take effect immediately when you turn it off.
Turning this option back on is a different story. If you had this option turned off for an app for a long time, turning it on will not automatically add older notifications to the Cover Sheet. iOS will have to wait until new alerts arrive that it can add to the Cover Sheet. It’s not going to maintain a cache of older notifications just in case you change your mind about the feature.
The Cover Sheet isn’t necessarily a bad feature. You might need to view older app notifications. The option to turn it off means that you don’t have to crowd the Cover Sheet with notifications you don’t need to revisit. For example, you can enable notifications for a game you play but hide it from the Cover Sheet. The last thing you need is game notifications mixed with email notifications especially after Apple removed the ability to sort alerts by app in iOS 10.
The Cover Sheet isn’t a security risk unless your notifications are all visible on your lock screen. You can choose to hide notification previews on the lock screen for email and messaging apps and it will apply to the Cover Sheet as well. iOS 11 is currently in beta so you won’t see this feature until September/October 2017.
