Help · iPhone & iPad
Alerts and notifications
Settings on the phone ▸ Notifications.
The master switches
- Notifications — everything on or off.
- Sound — off by default: alerts still appear, they arrive quietly.
- If iOS itself has notifications turned off for AtControl, an orange row says so with an Open iOS Settings button — nothing below it can work until that is fixed.
“Someone at the Mac” — the alarm
The app’s loudest feature: an alert when input returns to a Mac that had been idle.
- Alert me — on/off (on by default).
- Idle for at least — 5, 10 or 30 minutes.
- When — Always, or Only if the screen is locked.
- Break through Focus — mark the alert time-sensitive so it reaches you through a Focus.
Your Mac tells the phone how long it had been idle and whether the screen was locked; these two choices decide which of those moments reach you. A remote connection that opens while nobody is at the keyboard is delivered under the same alarm.
Also notify me about
One switch each — Timer, Blocking, Agent sessions, Remote access, Mac offline, Command results, Pairing, System and power. Defaults on: Someone at the Mac, Timer, Mac offline, Command results. Turning a category off here stops the Mac from being able to notify you about it at all; with several Macs the choices apply to every one.
What each says: “Someone is using your Mac.” · “The timer on your Mac changed.” · “Blocking on your Mac changed.” · “An agent session on your Mac changed.” · “A remote connection to your Mac changed.” · “Your Mac went offline.” · “A command you sent has finished.” · “Pairing with your Mac changed.” · “Your Mac reported a system event.”
The one local notification
Sixty seconds before a timer’s deadline the phone itself schedules “Sleeping in 1 minute.”, titled with the Mac’s name — no iCloud round trip needed.
How they arrive
Alerts are records your Mac writes to your private iCloud database; iCloud pushes them to the phone, where a small notification extension turns the record into the sentence you read. Notifications are grouped per Mac. Alerts follow your notification settings and are separate from the silent channel that carries commands.