iOS 27 moves notifications to the corner

Apple is changing one of the iPhone and iPad’s oldest gestures in iOS 27. Since iOS 5 in 2011, users have opened Notification Center with a swipe down from the top center of the screen. In the current iOS 27 and iPadOS 27 betas, that gesture is reassigned once Siri AI is enabled.

By default, opening Notification Center works as before. But with Siri AI turned on, swiping down from the center of the top edge now launches the new Siri experience instead. To reach Notification Center, users must swipe down from the top-left corner. Apple is also reinforcing the shift visually, with alerts now animating in from that corner.

The move gives most of the top edge to Siri AI, showing how heavily Apple is prioritizing the feature. The last comparable change came when Control Center moved from a bottom swipe to a top-right corner swipe on iPhone X, a design Apple later standardized across devices.

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On iPadOS 27 beta 1, the Siri gesture area stretched across nearly all the space above Home screen icons, and the Notification Center area could shrink further if users hid AM/PM or the date. iPadOS 27 beta 2 adjusted that, creating more even zones on either side: roughly two app columns on the left for Notification Center and the same on the right for Control Center, with the rest reserved for Siri.

According to 9to5Mac, the behavior changed slightly across the first two betas, but the third developer beta and first public beta suggest this is the version shipping this fall. iOS 27 is available now in developer and public beta, with an official release expected in early September.