Make Sense of Focus

Focus lets you create multiple custom Do Not Disturb modes, with each one allowing different apps and contacts to send you notifications while excluding the rest. You can also configure a Focus such that other people are alerted when you’re unavailable.

Focus encapsulates several similar previous features: Do Not Disturb, Do Not Disturb While Driving, and Sleep Mode. It might be a bit confusing at first, but it makes sense to put all of these settings in one place, and you can now customize all of those settings as you see fit.

For example, let’s say you have two Focuses: Work and Personal. In your Work focus, you might exclude all contacts except your manager, the company CEO, and your coworkers, and exclude notifications from all apps except Mail and Slack. It could also hide all of your Safari tab groups except the one you use for work.

You could also set up a Focus called reading that activates whenever you open the Books or Kindle app that shuts off all notifications and enables Dark Mode.

Focus also lets you hide certain Home screen pages so you can further block distractions. For instance, if you have your work apps on page one and games on page four, you could set up a work Focus that hides that page of games.

Focus is powerful, but can also be confusing. For instance, if you accidentally trigger your Work focus, you might start wondering where the heck your apps are. So, again, tread carefully.

Just Turn On Do Not Disturb

Let’s say you don’t want to screw around with Focus and just want to use plain old Do Not Disturb. That’s easy: pull up Control Center (see Take Control of Control Centerind the Focus panel, and tap the moon button to turn Do Not Disturb on or off. You can change your Do Not Disturb settings in Settings > Focus > Do Not Disturb.

But how do you turn on Do Not Disturb temporarily? Previously, you could touch and hold the Do Not Disturb button in control center to access this functionality, but Apple has made it a bit more complicated:

1. Open Control Center.

2. Tap the Focus button (but not the moon button), which displays a Focus list.

3. Tap the More button on the Do Not Disturb bubble.

4. Choose “For 1 hour,” “Until this evening,” or “Until I leave this location.”

Do Not Disturb turns on and will turn itself off based on whatever you chose. You now also know how to switch between Focus modes. Let’s look at how to set up a Focus.

Set Up a Focus

You can see and set up a Focus in Settings > Focus. There are four built-in Focuses to get you started: Do Not Disturb, Work, Driving, and Sleep (Driving and Sleep are only on an iPhone). Tap one of these to be guided through the setup.

You can also add your own custom Focus in Settings > Focus by tapping the plus icon in the upper-right corner. You can then select Fitness, Gaming, Mindfulness, Personal, or Reading; or tap Custom to create your own label. Again, the operating system walks you through the process of setting up a Focus.

Once a Focus is established, you can tap it in Settings > Focus to edit it at any time:

• Add and remove people to Focuses: You can set up a Focus to allow messages and calls from certain people or to exclude certain people. Go to Settings > Focus > Focus Name and tap People. The top setting lets you choose whether you allow notifications from only those people or silence notifications from those people.

  Which one should you choose? I recommend the Silence Notifications From option, because that way you can better fine tune the Focus without accidentally excluding people you need to hear from. If someone keeps distracting you during work hours, you can return to the Focus settings and specifically block their notifications.

  Tap Add People to add a person from your contacts. To remove someone from a Focus, tap the minus button by their avatar.

• Add and remove apps from Focuses: Go to Settings > Focus > Focus Name and tap Apps. Just as with the People setting, you can choose whether to silence or allow notifications from the apps you choose.

  In this case, you may be better off choosing Allow Notifications From, and specifying the apps you want to receive notifications from, since there are lots of noisy apps and most of their notifications aren’t important.

  This works pretty much like adding and removing people: tap Add Apps to add another app to the Focus or tap the minus button by an app icon to remove it.

• Sending Focus status automatically: You can set apps, like Messages, to automatically reply to people who message you while you’re in a Focus to let them know that you’re busy. You can see which apps can access your Focus status in Settings > Focus > Focus Name > Focus Status.

• Allow repeated calls: You can configure a Focus such that if someone calls you more than once in three minutes, as in an emergency, they can break through your Focus wall to ring your iPhone. Turn on Allow Repeated Calls in Settings > Focus > Focus Name > People. Above that, you can set it to allow calls from everyone, allows people only, favorites, or just people in your contacts.

• Link Lock screen (iPhone only): You can link a Focus to a custom Lock screen (see Customize Your Lock Screen). This link is a two-way street:

  • When you switch to that Focus, it also changes your Lock screen to the one you linked.

  • When you switch to that Lock screen, it shifts to that Focus.

  The fact that this is a two-way street is essential to understand. Otherwise, you might mindlessly change your Lock screen for fun and suddenly start missing important notifications!

  You can change link a Lock screen to a Focus by going to Settings > Focus > Focus Name and tapping the left-hand Choose option under Customize Screens. See Customize Your Lock Screen.

  You can also view and edit your linked Focus modes from the Lock screen:

  1. On the Lock screen, touch and hold the screen until it shrinks in. A button near the bottom of the shrunk Lock screen indicates the linked Focus. If no Focus is linked, it says Focus.

  2. Tap the Focus button to choose a Focus to link to that Lock screen. Tap a selected Focus to unlink it from that Lock screen (Figure 55).

  

• Hide Home screen pages: To make a Focus hide pages on your Home screen—like where you put your games—go to Settings > Focus > Focus Name and tap Choose under Customize Screens (Figure 56).

  

  Then select the pages you want to include in the Focus and tap Done. You can later tap Edit in the same place to change your Home screens, or tap the minus button by the Home screen image to remove that filter entirely.

Filter Focus with Focus Filters

iOS 16 and iPadOS 16 introduce a new Focus option: Focus Filters, which can either hide selected content in certain apps or trigger Dark Mode and Low Power Mode. To see your options, go to Settings > Focus > Focus Name, scroll to the bottom, and tap Add Filter under Focus Filters. Here’s a summary of what they can do:

• Calendar: Select which calendars you want to show while in that Focus. For instance, you might only want to see your work-related calendars while at work.

• Mail: Choose which Mail accounts to show during a Focus. All others are hidden. To use work as an example again, you might want to hide your personal email accounts during working hours.

• Safari: You can select only one tab group that’s displayed during that Focus. Unlike the Calendar and Mail options, you can’t choose more than one.

• Messages: This hides Messages threads from everyone except those you selected in People.

There are two other filters: Dark Mode, which lets you automatically set Dark Mode or Light Mode when the Focus is on, and Low Power Mode, which lets you turn that on or off when the Focus is on.

Be careful with Focus Filters. Since they hide content when the Focus is enabled, they could lead to frustration and confusion.

Trigger Focuses

There are three ways to turn on a Focus:

• Automatic: You can have Focus modes turn on automatically in a few different ways. You can see these in Settings > Focus > Focus Name under Turn On Automatically.

  One option you might see is Smart Activation, which activates Focuses throughout the day based on your habits. I personally would not rely on something that unpredictable.

  Some Focus modes have special automation settings. For instance, the Sleep Focus is controlled through the Health app on an iPhone. The Driving Focus can only be edited on an iPhone and it has special settings to detect when you’re driving.

  Other Focus modes have three methods of automation:

  • Time: Choose the start and end times, select which days you want the automation to trigger, and tap Done.

  • Location: Either tap a predefined location, like Home, or search for an address and select it in the list. Tap Done.

  • App: Select an app from the list or search for an app. Tap Done. When you open the selected app, you’ll receive a notification that the Focus has turned on. The Focus will turn off automatically when you switch away from that app.

  You can mix and match these automations. For instance, you could have a Focus called Work trigger when you’re at the office, between the hours of 9–5 on weekdays, or when you open Microsoft Excel.

  To turn off or delete an automation, go to Settings > Focus > Focus Name and then tap the automation. There you can turn Automation off or back on, or tap Delete Automation to get rid of it.

• Control Center: Turn on Focuses manually in Control Center by tapping Focus (if you tap the moon button it turns on Do Not Disturb). A menu appears with Do Not Disturb, Work, Personal, and any other Focuses you’ve defined. Tap one to turn it on. Tap it again to turn it off. Tap a More icon for a Focus to see options to turn it on for an hour, until the evening, or until you leave your current location.

• Notification Center (iPad): When a Focus is enabled on an iPad, an icon appears in Notification Center under today’s date (the icon varies depending on which Focus is turned on, Figure 57). Tap it to change or turn off Focus (tap a selected Focus to turn it off).