There are several ways to enable Do Not Disturb on your iPhone.
We’re now hyper-aware of who is attempting to communicate with us throughout the day, thanks to our iPhones. We receive notifications for phone calls, text messages, social media mentions, and a never-ending stream of pings from various apps and services.
Even if you mute your phone, your screen will still light up with incoming notifications, making it difficult to truly “unplug” from the online world.
That’s why Apple provides Do Not Disturb, a mode that completely silences your iPhone (with a few exceptions — see below). When enabled, Do Not Disturb mutes all audible notifications and dims the screen. Yes, the notifications are still coming in, and you can see them if you manually turn the screen on. However, if you leave the phone alone, it will provide you with a break from the online world.
Do Not Disturb can be used in two ways. You can turn it on at any time, such as when you walk into a movie theater, or have it turn on automatically every day, such as at bedtime. See the two methods listed below.
How to manually use Do Not Disturb on an iPhone
- To access the Control Center, swipe up from the bottom of the screen. If you have an iPhone X or later, or an iPad running iOS 12 or later, swipe down from the upper right corner of the screen to bring up the Control Center.
- Select the Do Not Disturb option. Do Not Disturb is now enabled, and no notifications will be sent to you until you return to the Control Center and tap the icon to disable it.
- To further customize Do Not Disturb, deep press the icon when it is turned on. You can enable it for an hour, until the evening, or until you leave your current location.
- Tap the Do Not Disturb button to activate the feature immediately, or deep press the button for more scheduling options.
That’s all there is to it – Do Not Disturb is now enabled. However, there are numerous ways to customize what can pass through the Do Not Disturb barrier, allowing you to see exactly how much you want. See the section below on Customizing Do Not Disturb for more information.
How to set Do Not Disturb on an iPhone to activate at a specific time every day
- Tap the Settings icon, followed by “Do Not Disturb.”
- Select “Scheduled” to activate the scheduling mode.
- Select the From – To option and enter the start and end times for Do Not Disturb every day. For example, you might want it to start at 10 p.m. every evening and end at 7 a.m. every morning. Tap Back to save your changes.
- Make any additional changes to your Do Not Disturb Settings (see Customizing Do Not Disturb below), and then return to the main Settings screen by tapping Settings. It is now scheduled to run every day.
How to Change the Do Not Disturb Setting on an iPhone
From the above scheduling page, your iPhone allows you to customize the Do Not Disturb feature in a variety of ways:
- Do Not Disturb will be enforced for hours at a time in bedtime mode. When you enable it, notifications will be kept off the lock screen all night, so even if you turn on your phone, you will not see any notifications. (If you absolutely must check them at 2 a.m., they will still be in the Notification Center.)
- In the Silence section, you can also specify how quiet your phone should be. Select “Always” (the phone will remain silent while in Do Not Disturb mode) or “While iPhone is locked.”
The Phone section allows you to specify who will receive phone calls. You can allow calls from “Everyone” (which, if we may be so bold, defeats the purpose of Do Not Disturb), “No One,” or only people in your “Favorites.” - Please do not disturb While Driving allows you to set Do Not Disturb to activate automatically, as you might expect, while driving. You’ll need a car with Bluetooth capabilities for this to work.
Finally, another Do Not Disturb option is available. It’s called Emergency Bypass and can be found in the Contacts app. When you enable Emergency Bypass for a specific contact, calls from that person will ring and vibrate even when the phone is set to Do Not Disturb. To do so, open the Contacts app and tap “Ringtone” on the desired contact. Turn on “Emergency Bypass” on the Ringtone screen.
