Some iPhone 16 users don’t see Gamil notifications
Some complaints about Gmail persist, such as Google not allowing you to recover your account password and hackers changing your two-factor authentication options. It seems that you can add push notifications that have disappeared on your iPhone to the list. I’ve been closely monitoring official and unofficial Google support forums, and users are increasingly frustrated that Gmail push notifications aren’t working on their iPhone 16 smartphones. Take the following example posted to the Gmail subreddit on October 26th. “Essentially, you no longer receive new email push notifications in the banner or Notification Center. You have to go into the app to see them.” Email push notifications disappearing can be fixed by users It’s definitely an annoying problem that you want to know how to do, but for the most security-conscious people, it might not be such a bad thing. Here’s what you need to know, how to fix it, and why you don’t want to fix it.
Gmail push notifications disappearing issue affecting iPhone users
To be clear, the issue with push notifications not working for Gmail users has existed in numerous incarnations of the iOS platform across multiple generations of iPhone hardware. I described this as an eternal problem because this is not new. Here’s an example from January, explained by Phone Arena’s mobile technology journalists. “For the past few days, I’ve noticed that instead of receiving notifications with previews from Gmail on my iPhone, I’ve been seeing a banner with a Gmail icon that looks like this: “You have a new message.” This is because the sender of the email and subjects, the absence of a preview meant users had to open the Gmail app every time. This definitely fits the definition of a first world problem, but I can understand why so many people get so worked up inside about this. After all, both the iPhone and Gmail are well known for being easy to use, which is what attracts so many users in the first place.
Why do Gmail push notifications stop working for some iPhone users? How can I fix the problem?
We’re sorry, but we couldn’t uncover a single bug or software issue behind the strange case of Gmail push notifications disappearing. This makes me think that it’s likely a matter of the unique circumstances of the user who filed the complaint on the forum, and that they often have a “different identity”, if that makes sense. I am. If this were an actual bug in iOS, it wouldn’t carry over from one major update to the next, or from one annual iteration to the next. Nor is it resident in the Gmail application, which is similarly updated multiple times each year to fix discovered bugs.
Not knowing why makes it difficult to make recommendations, but not impossible. The Phone Arena journalist mentioned earlier found that doing the following fixed the issue:
- Open the Gmail app.
- Tap the hamburger menu and select the settings option.
- Select Email Notifications, then None to complete.
- Restart your iPhone.
- Repeat the steps above, but select “All New” or “High Priority” email notifications to complete.
Other users said that simply deleting and reinstalling the Gmail app worked for them, while others said restarting the iPhone itself was enough.
Why you shouldn’t enable Gmail push notifications
I’m sure this will be a controversial opinion, but don’t use verbose push notifications in your email app. As someone who’s been on the security and privacy side of the fence, why am I saying this? The number one reason is the risk of phishing. We tend to use push notifications as an at-a-glance email filter to determine what we need to read and what we should wait for. Threat actors rely on compelling and urgent email subject lines to lure readers into clicking through and falling into whatever traps lie in store. If a user has already decided that they need to read an email from the notification preview, they are more likely, in my not-humble opinion, to trust what they find when they read the email. This is for security reasons and I’m not the only one who thinks this way. For iPhone users, I agree. This is less of a risk than on Android, as more attack campaigns are aimed purely at the latter. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t risks.
It’s not just security aspects that need to be considered. Like push notifications in other applications, Gmail push notifications have privacy considerations. I heartily recommend reading this Wired article about how law enforcement can use push notification data in investigations. iPhone users can control how notifications are displayed from the Settings menu, but we recommend that you don’t enable notifications if your screen is locked or shared.
