What does "notifications silenced" mean in Messages?

Nobody does. And the latest update, 15.2.1, doesn’t fix it. Come on Apple, this is UNACCEPTABLE. This bug is causing so many people so many problems. Own up to the fact that the Focus “feature” is a dog.

FIX THIS!!

Focus has got to be the single worst feature Apple has ever introduced. I DO NOT have Share Focus Status enabled on any of my other devices. I DO NOT have a Focus status enabled on my iPhone. But, people texting me still randomly get a message that I have notifications silenced. I do not!!!

This is just ridiculous.

Another user here with same issue. All are off and showing people I have notifications silenced. A previous reply said to add all contacts you don’t want to have silenced. I don’t want any silenced this is insane. Apple fix or remove this!

Apple… you were a quality product but seems your software has gone to ****. Every month there is a glitch or apps are not working properly. If it aint broke dont fix it. Figure out what you know and do it really well. As of late apple can come and pick up all their junk

This is exactly why I’m not going to be installing updates for a while. Cannot deal with this again. After 4 months, some arbitrary fiddling with settings seems to have resolved it (I think?) but I’m not doing that again!

Bigmountainmillwright69 wrote:

Apple… you were a quality product but ......

This is a user-to-user technical support forum. Apple doesn't read here for suggestions or feedback. However, you can let them know your thoughts here:

Product Feedback - Apple

Same here Focus and DND is off on all devices. All systems show up to date. Rebooted devices yet still people are getting "... notifications silenced" What a horrible roll out this Focus is. If I don't want to be disturbed I simply turn off ringer or device. At least I know it will work when I turn it back on.

Focus is a "feature for feature's sake". Totally useless to me and I'm an IT consultant who presumably would find fancy features to be useful. What Apple and others need to realize is that new features like this are clearly not user-tested before roll out, and so they should make it optional. Show some kind of 1 minute video walkthrough on how beautiful and fancy a feature is, but give the user the option not to have it. The downside is that this approach will stifle consistency across Apple devices, but it's either that or they learn to properly user-test before feature rollout. Focus is a nice ideal, but Do Not Disturb was a lot more to the point. Maybe "do not disturb" is to offensive to the fragile types out there, who knows.

ColinCon wrote:

Focus is a "feature for feature's sake". Totally useless to me

Focus is awesome. It brought much-needed granularity to the seriously underpowered Do Not Disturb. Does it require a bit more effort to set up properly? Sure. But, it's well worth the effort. While there is still room for improvement it goes a long way in the right direction.

I must have been in a pessimistic mood when I posted my original. You're probably right, and ironically I'm not normally one of those "if it ain't broke don't fix it" mindsets. In fact I hate that phrase to be honest because it almost universaoly carries a degree of ignorance in the mindset of the person stating it. Anyway, I do know that this issue not notifications silenced is absurdly difficult to figure out. Particularly troubling is that it's an issue on someone else's end, the person who gets feedback from their contacts saying they are "silenced", yet they can't find anywhere where to fix it.

If this is indeed a bug, it highlights that Applies not doing sufficient QA before rolling such features out. And in fact, be it a bug or not, the fact that so many people are having this problem, indicates a QA issue still, but more on the user experience side. Still a "bug" of sorts either way.

However, I'll take a better look at Focus and give it it's fair due. Thanks for helping me shed some of my own ignorance.

That's not the issue. You had Notification on a schedule so it was behaving as it should.

The problem is my notification is not on a scheduled here and everything focus is either off or deleted yet text are still showing "... has notifications silenced."

I just had this happen between me and a sister, and I’m glad I came here before I said anything to her, because my initial reaction was to assume she had been offended or upset with something I had said. This setting could definitely cause drama and rifts in relationships where there shouldn’t be. Definitely a bad move on Apple’s part! Fix it.

Go to “Focus” by swiping up on your home screen. Click on the “Focus” button, then you will see this screen in the picture below. Choose a focus, then click “settings” at the bottom. You can see the “settings” under the Driving focus area in the picture below:

In Settings, first turn off Do Not Disturb, then also turn off the Focus Status.

You’ll need to shift the Share Focus Status from green to gray for it to be off.

Repeat this step for each Focus area as seen in the first picture. Hope this helps 🙂

I've been seeing this issue intermittently for months.

I'm somewhat of an iphone/Mac power user, and I can't get these to stop. My wife and I frequently see this message for each other, even when neither of us have DND (do not disturb) turned on.

Very frustrating.

Me too same thing ever since I installed the 15.1 update. I have focus completely turned off and have deleted the focus options that it allows to be deleted. My focus is completely off and it still shows that I have my messages silenced.