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Learn the small difference between notification sorting in iOS and OS X

Just like in El Capitan, there are three different ways to sort items in Notification Centre. However, these options are presented slightly differently in iOS.

Go to Settings > Notifications and tap the Sort Order item. You have a choice of two settings: Recent and Manual. The latter is equivalent to Manually by App in OS X, of course. If you choose it, a list of apps appears lower down on the same page. Drag from the grab handles to the right of each app to set the order in which you want their notifications to be listed in Notification Centre. Notifications are then grouped by app, and displayed in reverse chronological order in each group.

It’s the other option that works slightly differently in iOS – rather than there being two additional sort order options like in OS X (Recents and Recents by App), there’s just one plainly labelled Recent. With this selected, go back to the main page and you’ll see a Group by App switch just below the Sort Order setting.

So, iOS does have the same two additional options, but the result you get is a combination of two intertwined controls. When Group by App is off, the sort order is equivalent to the plain Recents option on the Mac, putting your notifications in strict reverse chronological order. When it’s on, a new notification from Messages, say, will move all of its unattended notifications to the top of the list. You might prefer the latter if any notification from a particular app is important, rather than rigidly attending to things by time received.