What does "notifications silenced" mean in Messages?

Possible fix for those still having issues. I was having this issue with my spouse. I tried everything recommended in this thread and in others. I checked her status from my son's iPad and realized the "notifications silenced" message seemed to be specific to me. I did not see the same message when trying to message my spouse from my son's iPad.

Here's what I did:

1. Went to messages on my spouse's phone (the phone giving the "notifications silenced" message). I went to our message thread. She had me pinned at the top of her messages. I long pressed my picture and toggled "hide alerts" on and then off again. It was already in the off position, but I toggled it anyway.
2. I unpinned our message thread, I swiped our thread to the left while viewing all messages and toggled the alert icon (bell) on and off. Again, it was not on or silences but I toggled it on/off again anyway. This is probably the same as hiding alerts in step one above, but I was trying everything at this point.

After doing this, the "notifications silenced" on my wife's phone went away. I did not restart any devices. I'm not sure exactly how long it took as I stepped away for a few minutes but this did it for me.

Hope this helps.

I have just noticed the same problem. I checked to make sure Focus was turned off, and it was. I restarted my phone and it appeared to fix it for now. We will see in the future. Sounds like a bug in iOS.

OK. Riddle me this. I have been getting the message that my wife has "notifications silenced" when we have gone to great pains to make sure she doesn't. We turned off EVERYTHING POSSIBLE associated with Apple's unfortunate Focus "feature". Nothing helped. So, on a whim, I signed out of iCloud on my iPhone and 12.9 iPad and, EUREKA, I didn't get that "has notifications silenced anymore". My smaller iPad Pro still gets them, but I didn't sign out of iCloud on it yet.

Could it be that the problem is on the receiving end? Will it come back? Time will tell. Please let me know if this works for you.

Omg! Sunskymo YES!!! Mine same **** thing! The only thing I did was playing around in my phone one nite and set up Bedtime Alarm? Not even sure what it’s called but it lets you dial how many hours you want to sleep and gives you a little cute alarm notice telling you it’s almost time for bed. It automatically turns your alarm on and keeps track of how many hours you sleep… which to me is useless because I do not sleep the whole nite through. The only device I have found that really lets you know that info is the Fitbit. Now I have to figure out or try to remember what part of the phone I was in when this happened 🙄😤 bunch of BS!

i fixed my wife’s (for the time being) and I THINK this is what finally did it:

settings

focus

Do not disturb

Add schedule or automation

(Add a “smart activation”)

Then delete the automation you just activated.

after I did that, (without even restarting) the “***** has notifications silenced” message WAS GONE! Halle-freaking-lujah

I still had a issue after that and noticed my iPhone account was linked to my iPad. I also set up the Personal setting on that and then deleted all the focus settings. All 3 products have no focus features on and personal settings are deleted. So far all good. It definitely has something to do with the Personal setting in focus. You can actually watch the notifications silenced switch off when you add a contact if you

have both devices present.

Software sometimes glitches, people seem to have this misconception that because something that is enable or disabled that it will work all the time. That is not the case here. Just disable all focus toggles, then go to privacy and scroll down to focus. Make sure to enable toggle here. Go back to notifications and enable focus toggle again, have someone observe your messages on their phone. Keep toggling on and off your focus until you see your silenced mode on your friends messages disappears. You can go back and toggle off focus in the privacy settings as well, it should not come back.

I did eventually fix it, but only by going through some steps with an Apple help person through chat. It was simple enough, just making sure things were toggled correctly and then restarting, but it seemed to work! I have transcribed the relevant info we did below, hope it helps someone else! Note: I have an ipad and an iPhone, so it mentions both. All relevant steps were performed on the iPhone:

Ensure all Focus features are turned off on your iPad then go Settings > Focus and turn on "Share Across Devices" on your iPhone.

Then from the same tab Settings > Focus > Do Not Disturb tap "Focus Status"

On that screen, toggle "Share Focus Status" to On

After that, go back to Settings > Privacy > Focus and make sure "Shared With" Messages is toggled On. Now toggling on and off the Do Not Disturb setting will work as intended and people should not see either the "notifications silenced" message nor "Notify Anyway" warning when the Focus is off. 

If the previous setting is already toggled On, toggle it off and then back on.

Then restart, using this method, noting that there are no pauses or delays and all buttons should be pressed as quickly as possible: 

Press and quickly release Volume Up button

Press and quickly release Volume Down button

Then press and hold the Side button for 30 seconds until you see the Apple logo

This resolved it for me. It is very specific, but I hope it can help someone else.

Saralucky’s advice fixed my iPhone. Now when DND is on and the sender begins typing a message to me, they get the message that notifications silenced before they send the message. When DND is off they don't get the message. Finally got this issue resolved.

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.

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!

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 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!

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!

Apple Watch

Many people have talked about checking all devices. I have gone over my iphone, ipad and macbook air multiple times without success fixing this problem. Then looked at my watch for the time and saw the moon at top of it. Somehow I had turned on the DND on Apple watch and it silenced everything. So dont forget checking your Watch also.