New Do Not Disturb Options

In iOS 12 you can now turn on Do Not Disturb and have it automatically turn off using a variety of criteria. This solves the problem of turning on Do No Disturb and then forgetting to turn it off. You can choose to have it turn off automatically after an hour, later in the day, when you leave your current location, or at the end of a scheduled event in your calendar.

You can also watch this video at YouTube (but with ads).

Video Transcript: iOS 12 has some great new features for Do Not Disturb on the iPhone and iPad. First, let's look at the basics. The Do Not Disturb feature, of course, has been around for a little while. You go into Settings, go to Do Not Disturb. You can switch it on manually here or you can have it scheduled which is what most people do. You schedule from a certain time. So I have mine scheduled from 11:00 to 7:00 so at night I don't get notifications, you know, and my phone's not vibrating and making noises and lighting up and all of that.
You have all your same settings here. For instance, you know, you can allow people to call you if they're on your Favorites list. You can have people call you if they call repeatedly. That kind of thing. The problem is if you want to turn Do Not Disturb on manually. Now why would you do that? Well, say you go into a meeting or you're just doing something where you don't want to be bothered. You're at lunch and you don't want to get any notifications or phone calls or anything like that.
Typically you use Control Center to turn that on. Go into Control Center and you've got that little crescent moon there. You tap that and Do Not Disturb is now on. The problem is people forget to turn it off. So you go into a meeting and turn on Do Not Disturb and now you forget to turn it off after the meeting or the movie or whatever it is you were doing. So there's new features. You get to those new features right here in Control Center. 
So instead of just tapping the crescent moon you tap and hold and here are the new features. These vary depending upon your situation. You're always going to see the first one. The For 1 Hour. This is great because it turns on Do Not Disturb and automatically turns if off an hour later. So if you don't want to be disturbed just right now but you're not sure that you're going to remember to turn it off you can say For 1 Hour. If you remember to turn it off five minutes later fine. But if you don't at least after a hour it will go off automatically. 
Then you get this other one that changes according to the time of day. So right now for my time of the day it's going to stay on until this evening. In other words for awhile, for several hours. Then you have some other options. If you're in a location that you have setup in your contacts and things like that, like I have this location here as Home, you can have it called Work, you can have it called you know whatever, you have a location in your Contacts there, you'll have an Until I leave this location setup. So here it says, Until I leave this location, home. Great. I turn that on and now when I leave here it'll go back on. Perfect.
You also have events. Now if you have an event going on in your Calendar, like at meeting as I've got scheduled right here, you can see it actually picks this up and it will allow you to say yes keep it on until the end of this scheduled event. You can select any one of those. It's really handy so you don't forget to turn off Do Not Disturb. You can also hit the Schedule button there and it actually jumps right to the Do Not Disturb settings as before.
So you still have the option to turn it on and off manually but at least now you can have the option to turn it on and have it turn off automatically after a given set time or end of an event or when you leave a location.

Comments: 8 Responses to “New Do Not Disturb Options”

Karl

6 years ago

Gary,

I really wish they would give us an option so that when DND is on it will automatically send a text message back saying that you are unavailable, like what it does when you have DND while driving turned on. That would be an easy fix on Apples part, moving that code over to the “regular” DND.

What do you think?

wade

I watched your comments on "Do Not Disturb". I has ios12 installed and it doesn't show any of the options you discussed. I think I have the old program, but it should have changed. What do i do?

Thanks

Gary Rosenzweig

wade: Not sure what you mean by "old program" -- check to see if you have iOS 12 installed. If so, you should see these Do Not Disturb options in Control Center.

Karl: I'm wondering if there is a problem there with text message fees. A lot of people still pay per-message or have a monthly limit. The driving thing is a safety issue, so maybe there it is justified. But I'd hate to be Apple support if someone used a wider auto-response function like you suggest and it ends up costing them extra on their bill because they respond to every spam message.

With DND on caller goes to voicemail or hangs up. Either way I’m alerted if missed call or vmail in my home screen. That seems to be sufficient without txting.

Elaine

I have the same issue as Wade. and I'm on iOS12. My control center from home page swipe up does not show"Dock Connector". It has something else (can't view now as I'm upgrading to 12.0) When I hold down the do not disturb it doesn't provide options on a 2ndary menu.

Just updated to 12.01. The Do Not Disturb options still do not appear when pressing and holding the crescent moon. Additional the "Dock Connector" screen Gary shows in the video is "Screen Mirroring" on my iPhone. Do I need to change this, if so, How?

Elaine: The "Dock connector" is just the "Screen Mirroring" or "Airplay" that you probably see. It depends on what your iPhone is connected to or what you have available. It shows Dock Connector for me because I am connected to my Mac via a cable and recording from it for the tutorial. It has nothing to do with Do Not Disturb. As for the DND control center button, are you holding it for long enough? If you don't have an iPhone with 3D Touch, then you need to keep holding it. That's what happens with my iPad since iPads don't have 3D touch.

Comments Closed.

New Do Not Disturb Options

Comments: 8 Responses to “New Do Not Disturb Options”

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