What does "notifications silenced" mean in Messages?

There are SO MANY PEOPLE confused when they receive “Notifications have been silenced” when they receive a text message and we see that we take it personally.

My understanding is that this feature allows your friends to get through if they need to but you won’t be getting advertisements spam, and ads for Christmas specials during the middle of the night.

my doctor sets his phone and schedules a wake up and sleep notification. I am not sure about the difference between DND and FOCUS settings, but I am sure it is nothing personal.

I wonder if this is because someone is using multiple Apple devices, if one of the devices doesn’t have Focus? It happens on my wife’s iPhone and we’ve checked all her settings are correct, but she uses an old iPad with 12.5.5 o/s and it won’t update further?

Just got off the phone with apple support for this same issue. My mother (of all contacts!) was getting the message that I had notifications silenced. I don't have DND on my phone and she was the only contact seeing it so it was pretty weird. I chatted with apple first and updated my phone to latest iOS (15.5) but the message still showed on my mother's phone (she also is updated to 15.5). My issue got escalated to a phone call with apple and it's been resolved!

Settings -> Focus -> toggle "Share across devices" on and off, then on. Back to Settings -> Privacy -> Focus -> toggle on Messages.

Back to Settings -> Focus -> Toggle Do Not Disturb on then off.

Hope it works for everyone!

My phone shows this DND and I’ve done everything to try to get it off and it shows still on my kids messages … is this something APPLE just assigned to anyone who ones an iPhone ??? Otherwise it should NOT be showing this .. I’ve not blocked ANYONE ever

The person who helped me said it’s a bug that they’ve gotten calls about and that the engineering team is working on it. Not sure why any solution to this is not publicized by apple or even an acknowledgment. I suggest calling the support team and asking if anyone has a fix. It worked for me today, hope it does for you too.

I’ve tried everything short of standing on my head to resolve this. It’s an obvious Apple issue that needs fixed considering texting is the most used app on any phone. Absurd this is an issue let alone one dragging on since October.

I think I figured out what was wrong with my phone when the same thing was happening to me. I share an Icloud with my Ipad which is a newer generation than my phone. My phone doesn’t even have the focus option because it’s older so since the devices share an Icloud and the Ipad is on do not disturb, it’s also sending that notification to people who send incoming texts to the ipad. I hope this helps!

Well I had had this happen twice now. I dont use Focus I have it turned off but I use the scheduling Do Not Disturb. From 10 PM toll 5 AM.

And it came up again.

I googled it and turned off everything that they say in Messages, Privacy and Focus. The only thing in Focus is the Auto Schedule that I use. So not really a part of Focus. So I even turned that off. And it still tells everyone I am silenced. My favorites and regular contacts. Everyone. I have read everything and it seems that Focus is integrated throughout the whole phone. That is why Apple has not done anything on it to fix it. It is too big. But they need to as it is a pig. I hear and read it is a big mess that they have created., How they are going to turn this thing off, I dont know or fix it. The last time I chnaged all settings to off and it took a few days and then it finally stopped saying it on peoples phones. Just dont use it. There is a toggle on the side of the phone. Manual is best I guess till someone can figure out how to make it work properly.

You would not belive how many people have an issue with this. It is huge.

Please someone come up with a how to turn this off and make it work. It is confusing to people who read that notification.

Thanks

Yes I did all of those steps then rebooted. I even signed out of icloud as I saw that as a fix. and it still shows silenced. I did exactly the same steps last time and it seemed to take about 8-24 hrs before it finally changed. Lets hope it does that again.

Don’t you see a lot of us have this issue and we 100% don’t have DND or focus on?

my mom doesn’t get any notification sounds, but it’ll still appear on her screen. It’s been like that for 6+ months with no fix. What is your suggestion for the 30 other people having the same issue on this thread alone??

For the last year I was able to have Focus off but still use the scheduling time of turning off my phone in the DND section. All other focus was turned off. It worked great. No isuue. Then the last update. The one prior to 15.2. That was when everything changed. Now I finally got the message to go away yesterday, so I turned on the setting for 10 PM till 5 AM.

Well today at 10 AM my message that I was silenced came on a a friends phone that wee were texting. So not only does it work but it can't read time either. The software is a complete failure. So many people once you get talking about this in Facebook or other media have this issue.

So sad!

My issue is not even getting any notification at all! If I text her phone, it doesn’t beep or vibrate. The notification will be on her screen, but it won’t light up until I hit the unlock button. Like it doesn’t light up when I text and it’s placed on the table. So there’s zero indicator she’s gotten a text, so she misses them often bc she picks her phone up when it rings, which makes the preview notification disappear. It’s acting like DND/Focus is on, but I’ve literally gone into every setting and turned it off. I even tried toggling it off under “messages” and switched it to kot allow messages to access focus information

she does get the sound and vibration on her Apple Watch. Those are the only 2 devices linked to her iCloud.

Im having the same problem it says my gf has notifications silent but when i go on her phone shes does not have me on dnd and iv tried everything to fix it and i cant figure it out its so frustrating😤

Here’s what I did to turn it off. I had the same issue. Turned all focus on. Messages in settings. And focus in settings. Turn on do not disturb. Leave on for about 15 min. Then turn each one off. I had to do it twice for it to work. But try that. It finally turned off for me.

Beyond frustrated I have turned off the DND I have deleted the sleep focus I’ve restarted the phone I’ve made sure that share the focus is off across all devices nothing is working at this point I’m beginning to think Apple up didn’t check for bugs in this new update because now all of a sudden my husband sees this message at the bottom of our message thread that says I have silenced my notifications when everything is off Apple needs to fix it because I’m about ready to say iPhone is a bad product and take it back to Verizon