Turn off “Notifications Silenced” on iPhone

I had this same issue for a few weeks. Finally fixed it by removing all scheduled focus and turning off do not disturb ON ALL DEVICES THAT USE THAT APPLEID/PHONE NUMBER.

Then in settings, cycle (turn on and off, then set to your preference) “share across devices”. This seemed to get everything synced up and removed the hide notifications, then we could chose to not share across devices so I could do focus on my laptop but always have notifications on on my phone.

OK, I just hung up after talking with Apple's customer service and they resolved the problem. BTW the customer service person was super helpful and very nice.

1. Go to Settings --> Focus --> Do Not Disturb, and turn off Do Not Disturb. Then in that same window, click on Focus Status and turn off Share Focus Status.
2. Go back to the Do Not Disturb page and make sure there's nothing active under Turn On Automatically.
3. Go back to the Focus page and make sure that there's nothing set up under Personal or Work. Those should say "Set up." While on the Focus page, turn on Share Across Devices.
4. Also, go to Settings --> Messages, and turn off Focus under "Allow messages to Access."
5. Make sure Share Across Devices is turned on for all devices, and that none of your devices is set to Focus or DND.

That's it.

I was able to resolve this issue by turning off all Do Not Disturb options in the Focus app EXCEPT 'Share Across Devices' which should be ON. Then I went to Messages in Settings and toggled the Focus button on/off. Restarted phone and all is well. Good luck!

I fixed this by going to Settings -> Messages

Under "Allow Messages to Access" it showed Focus as disabled.

I enabled it, then immediately disabled it again.

I had this problem. I was using a regularly scheduled Do Not Disturb before Focus was added to the OS. When I updated to the new OS it copied over my Do Not Disturb schedule to Focus. The bug is when the Focus is turned off on schedule, it still tells others your notifications have been silenced. You need to delete the schedule and recreate it, then everything works as expected.

I was having this problem under IOS 15.4.1 and the symptoms were similar: Anyone sending me a text message received the “notifications silenced” response.

I have an iPad Air 2, a iPhone XR, and a Series 5 Apple Watch. For the phone and pad, in Focus, Share Across Devices was off. Do Not Disturb, Driving and Sleep were all turned off under their respective submenu in Focus. My Watch did not have DND activated, and I have a Sleep schedule set up under the iPhone Health app but the time window for Sleep was not active.

Contacted Apple Support. The Advisor was very helpful - listened well, checked my settings, then went on hold to research it. She said that this issue has been coming up under IOS15 but is still being investigated. The Advisor gave me a work around:

1) on one device only, in Focus, turn on Share Across Devices

2) Under the Do Not Disturb focus, turn on Do Not Disturb

3) Then Turn off Do Not Disturb.

I then had two people send me a text, and they replied that the “Notifications Silenced” message was gone.

Hope this helps.

I had this issue as well. A friend of mine that I texted had that notification silenced on the bottom of every message I sent him every though his Focus was off. After trying all sorts of things, I simply opened the Contacts app, found his contact, added his Apple ID/e-mail address to his contacts card, tapped the message (word thought bubble) icon, tapped his e-mail address and sent a simple text. That fixed it.... no more silenced notification message! Hope this helps!

Hello All,

Go to settings..

focus..

turn on share across all devices..

go into do not disturb .. make sure it is turned off.

in allowed notifications add messaging app

in options under focus status make sure it is turned off.

after much trial and error this worked for me. hope it helps !!

I’ve tried all the steps and wound up talking to 1st level support for 2 hours last night. Every step they recommended I have already done. This morning I spoke with the next level up support who verified everything we did previously was correct. We then installed software on my phone so they could diagnose it, we took dozens of screen shots. All this will be sent to the engineers for a permanent solution supposedly. After all this I fixed the problem myself. Focus needs to be turned off on every Apple device you own, phone, iPad, watch, laptop and iMac (this is where I actually fixed the problem) When you are on the Focus screen in settings (iPhone or iPad) tap the do not disturb and delete any people you have, if you have to the right of that any apps listed delete them too. Under option on the same page it should say Focus disabled. When you click Home Screen the buttons should be greyed out the same thing with the Lock Screen. I actually had two things listed below that but I don’t remember what they were I deleted them both.

Go back to where it says Focus in the top left hand corner tap then down at the bottom it says Share Across Devices, turn this off. He is where I think the problem is. If you notice is says Turning on Focus for this device will also turn it on for your other devices. I don’t think this is true. Do these steps for your iPhone and iPad if you have one. If you have the watch make sure in the Focus setting it says mirror my watch. After doing all these things to my three devices and finishing up with support I still had the problem. I got to thinking maybe my iMac has a problem with Focus which I didn’t even realize it used. THIS IS WHERE THE PROBLEM WAS ACTUALLY FIXED.

On iMac go to:

System preferences (the Apple in the top left had corner of your screen)

Look for the Bell icon, Notifications & Focus

There should be two tabs, notifications and Focus. Tap Focus

Do not disturb should be off

Allowed notifications from-delete any people and and apps you have listed

In Turn On Automatically deleted anything you may have set up yourself

Uncheck share focus status

Now the biggie that finally fixed this issue at least for me.

Uncheck Share across devices (which as I said earlier if this was really working once you unchecked this either on your iPhone or iPad it should have also fixed it here unless I’m missing something.

So that worked for me. I have since forwarded this to my Apple case worker but he has not gotten back with me yet. Let me know if this did or didn’t work for you.

Focus may have been a good ideal but it obviously has some bugs in it. I liked the old Do Not Disturb better it was much easier to use.

reiddg wrote:

• Ever since my wife upgraded her iPhone 12 to IOS 15.1.1, my text messages to her show ".... has notifications silenced"

disabled anything to do with Focus

• Turned off Share Across Devices

• Logged into her Apple ID and found her ID was active on her iPhone and her Roku stick. I deleted the Roku stick from her account. She has no other Apple devices and does not have iTunes installed on her laptop.

• She has Do Not Disturb set up but that ends at 7:30 am. I have turned it off and back on

• Rebooted her iPhone 12

You will have to do all the above on your device and not on hers.

I’m have the same issue as posted by Dennis @reiddg. When I send messages to my dad it says “Dad has notifications silenced”. He’s on an older phone - iPhone 6 and there’s an option to silence notifications always or to silence notifications when screen is off. There’s no option NOT to silence notifications and one of those options must be selected. So unless he’s holding his phone he misses every message. Makes meeting for coffee more frustrating than it should be!!

I have tried everything that has been listed below and my phone still shows the "notification silenced". The even weirder thing to me is that my phone still vibrates and rings, it just tells others that I'm silenced. How is it that so many people have this issue and yet Apple still hasn't fixed it?!?

I have the same issue! It happened shortly after Apple changed to ios15 but it just started up again this week. I only experience it with some contacts. I have literally done everything. APPLE… PLEASE FIX!

I’ve done every single step of this on my only 2 devices, iPhone and iPad. Still the notification is coming up to anyone who tries to text me, so frustrated!!!