iOS 12 wish list: VIP for all messages, not just mail

Mail's VIP — short for Very Important Person — feature is great. It lets you "star" the people most important to you, then enable sound, vibration, and Lock screen notifications just and only for them. It's a terrific way to make sure you're alerted when you get email that matters, and avoid being interrupted when it doesn't. It's so good it shouldn't be limited to the Mail app — it should be system-level and available to Messages — even Twitter and Instagram.

Since Apple's about to start work on iOS 12, here's my pitch for getting universal VIP onto the feature list!

VIP, yeah you get through to me

The line between notification and interruption is fuzzy. To paraphrase a line from The Incredibles, when everything is special, nothing is. When everything gets your attention, you lose the ability to focus.

Right now, my iPhone and iPad only beep or buzz when a VIP Mail comes in. That way, I can be reasonably certain that if they do beep or buzz, it's because something really does need my attention, and in short order. Messages, in contrast, has no VIP setting, making notifications all or nothing. And since my friends, family, and colleagues use iMessage and SMS to contact me when things are urgent or they need to make sure I see something, I can't turn those notifications off — it has to default to all. And that includes the carrier offers, fake cruise contests, and all the other spam that comes in from time to time.

Apple just introduced CallKit for iOS 10, so VoIP apps could better integrate with the Lock and phone screens. Having a VIPKit would be great so apps could fully integrate with the contact settings as well. That way, Twitter, Messenger, Snapchat, and the like could be first-class VIP apps as well.

VIP could also fold in Phone Favorites, which is currently a separate list that, unlike VIP, doesn't sync with iCloud. Conversely, VIP could be made capable of punching through Do Not Disturb, the way Favorites does. That way, if you choose to enable it, you won't miss critical calls or critical messages.

Watch it scale

All of this is even more important on Apple Watch, of course, where the lack of granularity in notifications beyond Mail VIP makes some apps unmanageable.

Overall, VIP moving from a Mail feature to a system-level based in Contacts, available in all apps feels like not only a more functional solution, but a more consistent one. And that's why I'd love to see it in iOS 11.