Apple slips undismissable ads for its own services into the iOS Settings app

iPhone owners are increasingly annoyed by promotional banners that Apple has begun surfacing near the top of the iOS Settings app. The prompts push Apple’s own paid offerings — iCloud+ storage, free trials for Apple Music and Apple TV, and AppleCare+ warranties — and in many cases can’t be dismissed. Where a dismiss control exists at all, some users say it doesn’t work, so the promos linger for weeks or months alongside a persistent notification badge on Settings until they expire or the user pays up. The backlash has spread across Reddit and social media, with some comparing the tactic to Microsoft’s Start menu ads.

The move fits Apple’s broader pivot toward services revenue. With smartphone sales largely saturated, subscriptions and add-ons like iCloud+, Apple Music, Apple TV, and AppleCare+ are where the company sees room to grow, and some prompts are timed to appear right after a hardware purchase — awkward given the recent iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone Duo price increases. It sits uneasily with Apple’s premium, experience-first branding, and echoes the earlier unpopular decision to put ads in Apple Maps.

There’s a chance some of these are a bug rather than deliberate: users who already subscribe to iCloud+ report seeing the iCloud+ pitch anyway, which shouldn’t happen. Whether Apple quietly fixes that will signal how intentional the campaign is. Either way, with more promotional surfaces reportedly planned — including for the Visual Intelligence feature — the ads aren’t likely to disappear soon.