Notifications are the problem. In a constant quest to get as much of your attention as possible, apps will notify you to the point of disgust about every little thing. You can go to Settings > Notifications and change a lot of settings to limit this on a per-app basis, but let’s face it, not many people do this.

To make matters worse, the endless scrolling of notification bubbles quickly takes over your lock screen, obscuring any touching photos or cool artwork you have. Now that Apple lets you customize your lock screen in iOS 16, it doesn’t have anything like it! You can choose from three options for displaying notifications on the lock screen, two of which are designed to be space-saving.

Start swiping and pinching

There are three possible types of notifications on the lock screen: Count, heapas well as List. The list is the extended scrollable list of individual bubbles that iOS has always had. If you don’t want to change, this is what you need.

The stack is a small stack of notifications. They disappear into the distance at the bottom, with the most recent notifications at the top.

The graph is the limit of simplicity. It places a little text at the bottom of the lock screen showing you how many notifications you have and that’s it. If you think you’re spending too much time on your phone, or if you just don’t want things to clutter up your beautiful new lock screen, it might be worth giving it a try.

If you want to switch between views, you can do so right on your lock screen. When you’re in counting mode, you can swipe up or expand the list of notifications to switch to stack mode. When you’re in stack view, you can swipe up to see your notifications in list view, or swipe to change view to list view. In the list view, you can pinch or swipe down to return to the previous view.

Change how notifications are displayed in settings

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You can also change how notifications appear on the lock screen in the Settings app. This is an easier method that doesn’t require any guesswork – just select the desired view from the images. Open Settings, then tap Notifications. At the top of the screen you will find options for Count, Listor heap view with icons indicating how they look. Choose the one you like and your lock screen will show that view the next time you lock your phone.