Sometimes I feel that the do not disturb/focus is useless in some ways and can be changed to make it even more useful. For example and call me a crabby old man if you want but I'd like to see a feature where no one outside your allowed contacts can contact you what so ever if you have focus turned on. Right now if anyone calls you or text you multiple times within a minute I think it is? it will bypass do not disturb and the call or text will go through. I'm sure we have those friends out there who will text or call multiple times if you do not respond right away and it irritates the crap out of me. The only way around this currently is to turn off your phone altogether. I would like to refrain from doing that for emergency purposes. The only contacts I have in my allowed list are family and doctors offices and apple should make it so that if I have a focus or do not disturb on these are the only contacts I should be hearing from. While I was sleeping I had a friend text me multiple times and it went through even though focus was turned on and he was not in my allowed list. All it was was a text complaining about the rain and how he didn't want to hang out with anyone for labor day. That is not an emergency. In apples defense though they probably didn't even think of inconsiderate people because back whenever do not disturb was added which I don't know when that was it was probably back in the good ol days when you didn't have to worry about such a thing.
Comments
Repeat calls can also be silenced
The option is there but is buried deep. In any Focus settings, under the People option, just swipe pass through the allowed persons list till you land on the option that says, Allow Calls From, Activate that and after the option to allow calls from favourite/contacts/none, there is the option to turn off repeated calls altogether.
Hth.
First of all, yes you can do…
First of all, yes you can do that with the repeated calls. And also, one change I'd like to see is that I think there should be an option in Do Not Disturb to send an auto-reply text to someone that texts you. I would find that very useful.
Thanks, does this work for…
Thanks, does this work for texts as well?
No I don't think so.
No I don't think so.
Yeah it appears that the…
Yeah it appears that the repeat toggle only works for calls. That's a bummer. I hope one day they will modify it to include texts as well as those can be just as annoying with phonecalls at unwanted times.
Silenceing text messages
There is no way for text messages to bypass FOCUS. Just ensure people contacts are not in the Allowed People list in a given Focus settings. In my case, I have customized Do not Disturb focus for silenceing everything, and Personal focus to silence all calls and text messages outside contacts.
Disallow Messages from reading Focus mode
When you send a text to someone with Focus enabled using iMessage, there is a message above the text field saying that they have do not disturb enabled, with a "Notify anyway" button by it. I have never tried pressing it, but I assume it would bypass the other person's Focus settings and notify them. However, apps need permission to access Focus settings just like they do to use the camera or microphone, and I remember after an update I was asked if I wanted to allow Messages to have access to Focus settings. To turn this permission off, you can open Settings, Activate Messages, and turn off the Focus switch under "Allow Messages to access:". Turning this off should prevent Messages from allowing users to bypass Focus by pressing the "Notify anyway" button, although it will also prevent users from knowing if you have Focus on or not, which is another benefit of doing this in my opinion.
Do Not Disturb message in iMessage
When I first opened Messages after installing IOS 15, I was prompted to allow Messages to access Focus for this purpose. And yes I have seen the Notify Anyway button, and I don't really know why they put that there but I've never pressed it. You can turn this message off in Settings > Messages > Focus, and toggle the switch to off. But for now I keep it on and am very glad Apple put it there.