macOS Ventura notifications still broken months after its official release

macOS Ventura launched to all users at the end of October 2022. The current software for Macs brought a deeper integration with iPadOS by adding some common features such as Stage Manager and the Freeform app.

Unfortunately, even with Apple already updating macOS Ventura to version 13.1 and 13.2, the software still seems buggy, as the Notification Center has become an issue for many users – which seems entirely off as macOS Monterey notifications worked just fine.

Now, 9to5Mac‘s Chance Miller has again brought this issue to the spotlight. In addition to him, many users on Reddit complain about similar errors with the Notification Center.

When Apple released the first beta of macOS Ventura, notifications were almost unusable. That was understandable, given it was an early beta (…). macOS Ventura 13.2 was released to everyone last month, and notifications are still unreliable for both Apple apps and third-party apps. I’ve held out hope that these point-updates would fix the problems, but they haven’t.

He gives a few examples of how bad notifications are in macOS Ventura:

• They get stuck in the upper-right corner of the display;
• They don’t appear at all;
• They appear but don’t play sound – or vice-versa;
• They appear several minutes after it was supposed to.

Miller points out that one of the possibilities could be Apple’s Focus Modes, as they could mess up notifications on the Mac. But, significantly enough, this feature has been available since macOS Monterey, and with that software, the notifications weren’t an issue.

Unfortunately, it seems Apple doesn’t publicly acknowledge this issue or what users could do to see the experience improve. Personally, notifications on macOS Ventura have been worse, but they’re now a bit better.

That said, I still feel like missing some notifications because they don’t appear immediately. With that, I instantly get an alert on my Apple Watch or iPhone, then a few moments/minutes later, I’ll get the same notification on the Mac.

Apple will likely release the first beta version of macOS 13.3 soon, but it’s unclear if this will be the update that will fix this day-one bug.