How to Stop News Alerts on iPad & iPhone Showing on Lock Screen

Aug 10, 2017 - 11 Comments

Hide and remove News alerts from the lock screen of iOS

iOS Apple News defaults to pushing ‘news’ alerts and notifications to your devices lock screen, this is why sometimes you may pick up an iPad or iPhone and have various “News” notifications on the display, even if you never signed up to receive any headlines or news alerts.

These breaking News alerts on the iOS lock screen are often a mishmash of curious headlines on various topics, and while some users may find those type of stories to be vitally important and love having them pushed to their iPhone or iPad lock screens, other users may prefer to not have their device screens scattered with miscellaneous headlines of stories they might be disinterested in.

Fortunately it’s easy to stop the News app from pushing those alerts and notifications to your iOS device, thereby stopping all ‘news’ from appearing on the lock screen of an iPad or iPhone completely.

How to Remove Apple News Notifications from iPad and iPhone Lock Screen

We’ll show you how to remove the News notification alerts from the lock screen (or “cover sheet” as later iOS calls it), and also how to turn them off completely device-wide, if you don’t want to see the news alerts anywhere ever again.

  1. Open the “Settings” app on the iPad or iPhone and go to “Notifications”
  2. Find and tap on “News” within the Notifications app list, then adjust settings depending on the desired effect of hiding news from the lock screen, or hiding news alerts entirely:
    • To hide News from the iOS Lock Screen only (or “Cover Sheet” as the lock screen is called in iOS 11), flip the toggle next to “Show on Cover Sheet” or “Show on Lock Screen” to the OFF position
    • Hide News headlines and alerts from the lock screen of an iPad

    • To hide all News notifications and alerts from everywhere in iOS, toggle the switch next to “Allow Notifications” to the OFF position
    • Hide ALL Notifications and alerts from News on iOS

  3. Exit out of Settings app as usual

With the News notifications now turned off (either for the cover sheet / lock screen, or entirely disabled so the News app won’t alert you whatsoever) you are now free to lock your iPhone or iPad, then pick it up again, and not have the display scattered with headlines.

As long as the Notifications are disabled for News app, these type of notifications and headlines will no longer show up on your devices screen:

Hide breaking news alerts from the iOS screen

(I wonder, is there an intentional emphasis on tabloid style topics and buzzy headlines to show up on iOS screens? Are the news headlines chosen at random? What’s the point?)

Another possible approach is to go about blocking and hiding news channels and news sources in the News app that you don’t want to see. But while blocking news channels is a good solution to clean up the News app feed itself, it’s not as helpful if your aim is for stopping some of the nonsensical alerts from showing up at the lock screen. That’s because many respectable and high quality publications also push out tabloid headlines intermixed with their other news, and any of that may show up on the lock screen of an iPad or iPhone.

Going further, if you’re not thrilled with these sort of headlines and “News” material dotting various places throughout iOS, you might also want to remove News headlines from Spotlight search in iOS too so that the “News” headlines will no longer appear in your iOS Spotlight search results as well.

As usual, you can always reverse these changes simply by going back to the appropriate Settings and toggling the switches again. So if you decide to hide the “News” headlines but later determine you really miss seeing those latest headlines on the iOS screen, you will be relieved to know those alerts are just a few settings taps away again.

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Posted by: Paul Horowitz in iPad, iPhone, Tips & Tricks

11 Comments

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  1. Wm says:

    Your suggestion of turning off notifications in News with one toggle is incorrect. I shut off everything in the news pushed by Apple and it still appears every day.

    • P says:

      If you disable Notifications for Apple News, you will no longer get Notifications for Apple News. You must be doing something different, or referring to something different.

  2. Ewan says:

    I read that the News app apparently has a team of “editors” selecting the stuff that gets shoved onto your screen, and it’s obvious those editors have an agenda. Pushing their selected “news” updates onto your devices repeatedly so you feel a select few emotions, sending it to you over and over again, a bit Orwellian if you are to ask me.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIoAX5bI6S0

    All must think alike.

  3. Vloris says:

    Fortunately the News app only exists in just three of the worlds countries so I have nothing to worry about ;)

  4. RM says:

    I deleted the news app a long time ago because of this, but great tip nonetheless.

    What I’ve noticed lately is that apps turn on notifications without asking. It’s always good to visit these settings periodically: Settings>Notifications

  5. Expobill says:

    NEW ALERT: Egg scandal: 20 tonnes sold in Denmark, food agency says…….. Twenty tonnes of insecticide-tainted eggs have been sold in Denmark, the country’s food safety authority says…… BE CAREFUL!!!!

  6. Anne says:

    I never use “News”, but I rely on particular email newsletters that I have chosen.

    Sometimes I see the email notification but it doesn’t bother me.

    I’d be surprised if an outfit like NYT wouldn’t give an option to not receive such things. They never send me emails like that.

  7. SandyE says:

    Same as Angelo, although I have the widget there is no news app under notifications- seems odd.
    Using an iPhone 6 with iOS 10

  8. Angelo Dicerni says:

    Hmmm…
    I can’t find the news app under notifications. The app doesn’t exist but I do have a widget for it. 🤔

  9. JJ says:

    Thanks, I do not like these headlines at all.

    I don’t use News so I deleted it which stopped them, but I guess turning off notifications for the app works too.

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