Setting app defaults for iOS 5 Notification Center

Question

Does anyone know how an app can control its defaults in iOS 5 Notification Center? I have written a timer app using local notifications to alert the user when the timer goes off in background. When I upgraded to iOS 5, all notifications (alerts, sounds, lock screen) reverted to “off”. Needless to say, this is a terrible default setting for a timer app.

I’ve seen this happen with other apps, such as OmniFocus under iOS 5, but I’ve seen other apps like Pomodoro default to reasonable Notification Center settings.

I’ve checked the iOS 5 docs, notably the iOS 5 App Programming Manual, and the iOS Human Interface Guidelines, but haven’t found any information on this topic.

Has anyone discovered any pattern at all to the default settings?

Answer 1

Apparently, the app has to register itself with the Notification Center to be listed there; and then enabled by the user.

When I moved to XCode 4.2, my app did not show up in the notification center and I freaked out! Looking on the web a bit, I found the answer.

I have this code in the app's AppDelegate and all is fine now:

// Register the app for the Push- and Local-Notifications on iOS5 - else the users will not get the Local-Notifications
//
[[UIApplication sharedApplication]registerForRemoteNotificationTypes: UIRemoteNotificationTypeBadge | 
                                                                      UIRemoteNotificationTypeAlert |
                                                                      UIRemoteNotificationTypeSound];

Sam.

Answer 2

As far as I have discovered, it is not possible to edit the Notification Center Settings from a third party App. I really hope Apple releases an update that addresses this issue. I also have a birthday reminder App that is totally useless unless the user edits the Notification Center Settings manually .