Embodiments of the present invention relate to the field of communications technologies, and provide a message processing method and apparatus, to resolve a prior-art problem that intelligence of a notification message processing method is relatively low. In the embodiments of the present invention, an importance level of each application is determined based on a historical use feature of each application, and then a notification manner of a notification message of each application is determined based on the importance level of each application, so that when a notification message is received, the notification message is displayed in the notification manner corresponding to the application to which the notification message belongs. Solutions provided in the embodiments of the present invention are suitable for use during notification message processing.