What does "notifications silenced" mean in Messages?

My son just got his Apple Watch set up. Whenever I text him, it states “notifications silenced” yet all DND is off. My wife texts him at the same number and it doesn’t say “notifications silenced” for her. It appears to be a glitch and I am awaiting a fix.

Was happening to me too. Figured out how to fix it. Have the other person go to Settings - Focus - Do Not Disturb - then click on allowed notifications in the people tab. Have them add you. Back out to settings. Then go back in and remove said person and it should be fixed. Super frustrating but hope this helps!

This is definitely still an issue. I have done the following:

Turned off Share across devices under focus mode on my phone and macbook

Removed all focus modes on both devices except the default DND and Driving on the phone (both are turned off)

Deleted my sleep schedule so it won't trigger DND automatically

Restarted the phone and laptop multiple times

After all of this the "notifications silenced" message still WILL NOT go away.

This is ridiculous!

I spent most of the day going back and forth with Apple Support on Twitter to no avail. This was their final response:

We understand your concern and appreciate the information you’ve provided. This issue is currently under investigation. We don’t yet completely understand the issue are unable to predict when the investigation will finish.

Last night I upgraded my phone to iOS 16. I really hoped that would fix the issue. It DID NOT! This is so frustrating, my clients keep asking about it. I don't know if my older phone model has anything to do with or not. I have an iPhone 8 plus.

This error actually caused me to miss my hospital calling me for my labor induction.. The hospital called and it went straight to voicemail. Even though Sleep, focus and DND were all turned off. NOT HAPPY.

The message displayed says that the person you are messaging has notifications turned off for messages. This can happen if they are in Focus mode or if in Settings > Messages they have set messages to Focus On, meaning they do not want to be alerted when a message arrives. If this is on, then Focus affects only messages and not everything else.

Notification off for phone calls is a different situation. Those are turned off if the person has activated Focus, Is in Do Not Disturb mode or it the ringer has been turned off or if volume is set too low.

Yes, on our iPhones, we can silence notifications for individuals. I do it for several of my contacts who tend to message very late in the day … or very early. Their message are delivered. I just don’t get notifications. This is easier than trying to repeatedly explain my bedtime/downtime routine. They understand that in a real case of emergency, they need to call me … twice. If my iPhone is in Focus or bedtime mode, it is set to allow repeated calls from the same number.

Jlebowitz, your Mom either has the iPhone in Do Not Disturb (DND) mode on, or she is silencing messages from you specifically. Either way, the messages will go thru but there will be no notification “beep.” There is nothing you can do other than send the message. Don’t feel bad. It’s probably not a slight. I myself put the phone in DND mode at times during the day. Otherwise it seems my iPhone is constantly beeping. I answer messages on my timetable. It’s just something I need for me. Maybe your Mom needs that, too. Or check to see when you are sending messages. I have a certain friend silenced because she is a night owl. (I’m an early bird.) She frequently sends texts well after the time I go to sleep. It used to get me upset until I learned these tricks. Lol … I just give her the courtesy of not responding until the time she is normally up so as not to wake her.

I tried everything I could find to fix this. Finally I toggled mirror my iPhone off and on on my APPLE WATCH and power cycled. Problem solved. I can’t remember the last time I cycled the power on my watch, has to be the culprit.

RuthStevens wrote:

You might think Apple would reply….. crickets.

This is a user-to-user forum. Apple's participation here is limited to making sure we comply with the terms of use and to answering questions (in certain forums) that have received no responses in 12 hours.

Silencing notifications seems to be a bit pretentious. I say this because the few people who I have seen use this are very pretentious. If you don't want to be disturbed by your phone, turn it to silent.

So basically about a few weeks ago or two months ago or so, my friend I’ve been friends with for years now it’s saying blink blink has silenced notifications and I got kind of worried thinking I might not like me even though that’s not true even though I don’t feel close with me anymore, but then a few minutes ago or sooner it’s in the same thing but both times they came in and went away what’s this mean? I said it to a family friend too a year older thn/than me, but it went away it has only happened once, I didn’t really think much of it except yeah they silence notifications why what happened right now and then it’s happened again I thought the same thing someway I wasn’t answering but still I’m just confused is it them thinking do I want to silence the notifications or do I want to keep them open I still like this person or is it just like an accidental thing like a butt dial, or something when I accidentally clicked on it or silence notifications, or like something in your pocket

The only thing is, my wife and I know how to set and unset focus. With all of our devices having Do Not Disturb turned off and operating normally, we can still receive the message and can not find out what is "turned off" or "turned on" to make it happen.

My girlfriend just got a new phone and it says the same thing on my phone. I’m literally holding her phone in my hand and have scoured the settings. I can confirm she is not on Do Not Disturb nor am I on any special setting.