(Credit: PCMag / Apple)
A feature that allows you to follow sports teams across Apple News and Apple TV can result in incessant notifications that interrupt your video streaming or smartphone browsing. Luckily these alerts can be turned off. Here are the settings to adjust before the next big game.
How to Turn Off 'Exciting Games' Notification on Apple TV
Apple's "Exciting Games" notifications are intended to keep you apprised of major moments during games you can't watch live, like when it's bases loaded with two outs in Game 7 of the World Series. Sports fanatics may want to keep this setting enabled, but unfortunately, what counts as an "exciting moment" is all over the map, and Apple can overdo it sometimes.
To turn them off on an Apple TV device, open Settings > Apps and select TV under the App Settings heading. Scroll down to the Notifications area and toggle Exciting Games to off. Alerts for games you're not following should stop. Don’t want any sports synced to your Apple TV? You can turn that off too, at the top of this same settings screen.
How to Stop Following Sports on Apple News
(Credit: Apple/PCMag)Following a sports team in Apple News for the latest updates will also link those teams across other Apple apps. To manage them, open Apple News and select the Sports icon along the bottom bar. Within the Sports section, tap the three-dot menu in the top-right corner and choose Manage My Sports. Here, you can add or remove sports leagues, events, and teams—including eSports.
How to Manage All Sports Notifications
(Credit: PCMag / Apple)To turn sports notifications off in Apple News, open the app and select the Following icon on the bottom bar. Scroll all the way to the bottom and tap on Notifications & Email. Then scroll down to Alerts from Apple News and toggle the Sports button.
For Apple TV notifications, open the iOS Settings app, tap Notifications > TV > Customize Notifications and then toggle Featured Sports off.
Interestingly, there doesn’t appear to be a way to get notifications from Apple’s dedicated Sports app, though Live Activities will launch on Apple Sports with iOS 18 and watchOS 11.