iPhone Do Not Disturb Mode

If you want to silence your iPhone at night or while in meetings, you can use the Do Not Disturb mode to temporarily disable audible alerts. You can turn this on manually, or set a daily start and stop time.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. On today's episode let me show you how to use the Do Not Disturb mode on your iPhone.
So, your iPhone makes a lot of noise. You get phone calls, you're going to get alerts, notifications, and all that stuff. During the day and when you're just going about your regular business that's fine. You want to know about these things.
But at night when you're sleeping, or say if you are at a meeting, or you're giving a presentation or something then you want your iPhone to be quiet. There is a specific settings for this called Do Not Disturb mode. It's very easy to use. As a matter of fact you can turn it on yourself. 
Say you are about to go into a meeting and you don't want to be disturbed you can swipe up from the bottom to bring up the Control Center. Then you see the icon there that's the little crescent moon. That's the Do Not Disturb button. Tap that and it turns on Do Not Disturb mode.
Likewise you can tap it to turn it off when the meeting is over.
So what happens when you have the Do Not Disturb mode on. Well, you're not going to get any noise or any sound from your phone. One of the few things that gets through are alarms. So if you are using this at night and you've set an alarm for the morning don't worry. The alarm will sound.
So if you go into the clock app and set an alarm that will sound. But other things will be silent. Now there is even more to it than that.
Let's go into Settings and you'll see Do Not Disturb as one of the Setting categories with the same icon there. Go in and you've got a switch at the top where you can turn it on manually. The same thing as what we just did in the Control Center. 
But you can also set schedules. So you can turn on Schedules. I have it set to On and I have it set to go from 11:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m. So it automatically goes into the Do Not Disturb mode during those hours. I can tap on there and change those to any hours and any times I want.
You can also decide to allow some calls get through like either from Favorites or from Groups. You can't create contact groups on the iPhone of course. You have to create them on the Mac. But once you do and set those up in iCloud then they'll show up here. So you can have say a few people in a group and set that group to Allow Calls From here. Then you'll here from them.
Another way to deal with that, with emergency calls and things, is you see where it says Repeated Calls. If you turn that on then what happens is if somebody calls twice within three minutes the second call will go through. So you can let important people in your life know that if they need to reach you and it's nighttime or you just don't answer your phone to try again immediately and you may actually be there you just might have Do Not Disturb mode turned on.
You can also decide that you only want Do Not Disturb mode to be active when the iPhone is locked. So if it is sitting on your desk and you have it unlocked but Do Not Disturb mode is active then it will act like Do Not Disturb mode is not active. So you can choose either of those two modes. Depends on how you use your iPhone.

Comments: 12 Responses to “iPhone Do Not Disturb Mode”

Joel Anderson

8 years ago

Does the physical button on the side of my iPhone (SE) do the same thing?

Gary Rosenzweig

Joel: You mean the mute switch? No. That doesn't go on and off at specified times (how could it?) and has a different set of preferences for what happens and doesn't happen.

Max Fleming

thanks Gary I use this all the time for various things

Yes, that switch. Will it silence everything while I'm in a meeting, at least?

Joel: Your phone will still vibrate unless you go into Settings and turn that option off. And alarms will still sound, so make you you have none set. But the problem with the mute switch is that you may forget to turn it back on at the end. Do Not Disturb is better because at least it will reset at the end of the day.

Janice

Hi Gary, If the "Do Not Disturb" function is activated and a "FitBit" watch is also worn, would a call that would normally be silenced (no vibration) still be silenced to that FitBit watch?

Janice: no idea. Seems easy to try if you have a FitBit already connected. Try it now and report back.

Paul

Thanks Gary, Apple menus can be very confusing.

Jerry

Can the "do not disturb" function be set for a specific amount of time, say one hour, without enabling it to do the same thing every day at that time?

Jerry: No, you've just got those options in the Settings that I show.

Squafdonoboles

I just shut the phone off --- plain and simple.

Hey Gary, Just tried the "Do Not Disturb Mode" with my FitBit ... and voilà ... it worked just fine. Thanks for the MacMost posts & tips ... keep 'em coming :)

Comments Closed.

iPhone Do Not Disturb Mode

Comments: 12 Responses to “iPhone Do Not Disturb Mode”

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