Do not disturb iOS 16

Which is why there is a simple on/off switch in the control center. You don’t have to set up anything. The set up features are there because lots of people complained that simple on/off wasn’t enough, they wanted time of day, different schedules for different days, a setting based on location (e.g., at the gym, at work, when driving), etc. So Apple added all of the features that users clamored for. But you can still just turn it on or off.

Back in the Old Days you still had to say what happened when you turned on DND; block everyone, everyone except favorites, everyone except your SO, etc. You still need to do that. Do Not Disturb setup has been made much more flexible, but this has come at the cost of much more complication. To get it working again, do these steps ONCE:

• Tap Settings
• Tap Focus
• Tap on any Focus settings that you will never use and remove them (you can add them back later if you change your mind, and even create new, custom ones)
• Tap Do Not Disturb
• Tap People
• Tap Allow Notifications From
• If anyone is listed who should not call you when DND is on delete them; if you don’t want any calls from anyone, any time, delete all people
• Tap the dropdown next to Allow Calls From and choose Allowed People Only
• Optionally, tap on Apps, then Allow Notifications From and don’t add any apps.

All of the above is a one-time setup. After that, turn DND on or off with the Control Center Focus button. You can optionally set one or more schedules by going to:

Settings/Focus/Do Not Disturb/Set a Schedule.

mochicookie wrote:

After reading this thread and having the same issue I reached out to Apple chat support. They informed me that the 'old' do not disturb feature is not available anymore. Now you have to customize which apps and contacts are silenced by selecting them... I don't think this silences unsaved phone numbers though. ALSO you have to go through and manually select them, you cant just select all. They said they shared my feedback with product development team so hopefully the bring back the old option. What a terrible change geesh.

Do these steps ONCE:

• Tap Settings
• Tap Focus
• Tap Do Not Disturb
• Tap People
• Tap Allow Notifications From
• If anyone is listed who should not call you when DND is on delete them; if you don’t want any calls from anyone, any time, delete all people
• Tap the dropdown next to Allow Calls From and choose Allowed People Only
• Tap on Apps, then Allow Notifications From and add only apps you want to get notifications from when DND is on. If you don’t want any don’t add any, so it will essentially be “allow notifications from nothing"
• Set up schedule(s) if desired. Note that you can have different schedules for different days.

All of the above is a one-time setup. After that, turn DND on or off with the Control Center button. You can optionally set one or more schedules by going to Settings/Focus/Do Not Disturb/Set a Schedule.

Do Not Disturb setup has been made much more flexible, but this has come at the cost of much more complication. To get it working again, do these steps ONCE:

• Tap Settings
• Tap Focus
• Tap on any Focus settings that you will never use and remove them (you can add them back later if you change your mind)
• Tap Do Not Disturb
• Tap People
• Tap Allow Notifications From
• If anyone is listed who should not call you when DND is on delete them; if you don’t want any calls from anyone, any time, delete all people
• Tap the dropdown next to Allow Calls From and choose Allowed People Only; if there are no allowed people from the previous step then all callers will be blocked.
• Optionally, tap on Apps, then Allow Notifications From and don’t add any apps.

All of the above is a one-time setup. After that, turn DND on or off with the Control Center Focus button. You can optionally set one or more schedules by going to:

Settings/Focus/Do Not Disturb/Set a Schedule.

Under settings >notifcations >check your apps settings on which can notify you or not. Ensure you turn off grouping and the summary which time controls when you are notified.

Under Focus> You can Chose DO NOT DISTURB. Under this selection you can chose which apps or people get to notify you.

conedera wrote:

I keep a weird schedule. I swipe down from upper right to reach “Find Focus in the Day”. I turn on Do Not Disturb, which turns the opposite color to let me know it is activated. All of my other Apple devices reflect Do Not Disturb, which is cool. I go to bed very late.

And the next morning, my phone rings and wakes me up, which is not• cool.

I check and Do Not Disturb is still enabled.

There is no setting that turns on Do Not Disturb and leaves it on until I turn it off. Why not?

I have to agree with people here that this is WAY too complex.

Do these steps ONCE:

• Tap Settings
• Tap Focus
• Tap Do Not Disturb
• Tap People
• Tap Allow Notifications From<—very important
• If anyone is listed who should not call you when DND is on delete them; if you don’t want any calls from anyone, any time, delete all people
• Tap the dropdown next to Allow Calls From and choose Allowed People Only
• Tap on Apps, then Allow Notifications From and add only apps you want to get notifications from when DND is on. If you don’t want any don’t add any, so it will essentially be “allow notifications from nothing"
• Set up schedule(s) if desired. Note that you can have different schedules for different days.

All of the above is a one-time setup. After that, turn DND on or off with the Control Center button. You can optionally set one or more schedules by going to Settings/Focus/Do Not Disturb/Set a Schedule.

mrandmrsjohnqsmith wrote:

I agree 1000%. It is ridiculously complicated. A pungent example of how updates hinder productivity. Why did they take something so simple and make it so unjustifiably byzantine?

Focus, in my opinion, is a huge improvement over its very limited predecessor. However, I did have to take a little time to learn how to use it. But it didn't take long.

If you want to return it to essentialy the same as it was using iOS 15, it's pretty straightforward. Go to Settings>Focus. Select each focus profile except for DND. At the bottom of the screen is a delete button. Delete them all until you are just left with "Do Not Disturb". Go to Do Not Disturb and remove any scheduling or automatic options. Now, all you need to do is select which people and apps can notify you when you manually enable DND. Once that's done, all you will need to do when you want to turn on DND is go to the Control Center and tap the Focus button.

Or, you could just use the mute switch on the side of the phone over the volume buttons and skip Focus entirely.

(Copied and pasted from my post in this very thread from 1.18/2023.)

YOU HAVE A SIMPLE ON OFF SWITCH!!!!! The switch circled in green in the Control Center is the on/off switch!!!!! As has been explained many times in this thread already.

And you still have to set up “needed calls”, just as you had to do with every previous version. How to do this has been posted multiple times in this thread also, but I’ll repeat it here; To set up “needed calls", do these steps ONCE:

• Tap Settings
• Tap Focus
• Tap on any Focus settings that you will never use and remove them (you can add them back later if you change your mind, and even create new, custom ones)
• Tap Do Not Disturb
• Tap People
• Tap Allow Notifications From
• If anyone is listed who should not call you when DND is on delete them; if you don’t want any calls from anyone, any time, delete all people
• Tap the dropdown next to Allow Calls From and choose Allowed People Only
• Optionally, tap on Apps, then Allow Notifications From and don’t add any apps.

All of the above is a one-time setup. After that, turn DND on or off with the Control Center Focus button. You can optionally set one or more schedules by going to:

Settings/Focus/Do Not Disturb/Set a Schedule.

Charissa68 wrote:

Apple needs to bring back the simple do not disturb feature!!! I am not interested in setting focused times, etc. I am extremely frustrated with Apple regarding this issue and as I have just updated to IOS 16.2 I see that Apple has NOT listened to the many people who want the original do not disturb brought back. Keep the focus feature for those who want to use it but give the rest of us the option to use the original do not disturb feature!

You can essentially bring it back yourself. Though I would note that Do Not Disturb did have scheduling options.

Go to Settings>Focus. Select each focus profile except for DND. At the bottom of the screen is a delete button. Delete them all until you are just left with "Do Not Disturb". Go to Do Not Disturb and remove any scheduling or automatic options. Now, all you need to do is select which people and apps can notify you when you manually enable DND. Once that's done, all you will need to do when you want to turn on DND is go to the Control Center and tap the Focus button.

Or, you could just use the mute switch on the side of the phone over the volume buttons and skip Focus entirely.

After reading this thread and having the same issue I reached out to Apple chat support. They informed me that the 'old' do not disturb feature is not available anymore. Now you have to customize which apps and contacts are silenced by selecting them... I don't think this silences unsaved phone numbers though. ALSO you have to go through and manually select them, you cant just select all. They said they shared my feedback with product development team so hopefully the bring back the old option. What a terrible change geesh.

TL;DR: DND wouldn’t silence calls/notifications. I didn’t touch a single setting in DND nor did I have any shortcuts in use. It was as if you took a new iPhone out of the box, turned on DND and it literally nothing.

To fix I had to completely erase my iPhone and not restore any data from iCloud.

So my issue with DND (on iOS 16-16.2 on a

iPhone 14 Pro Max) was that while DND was on, it would still play notification sounds for every single app. It would still allow calls through with sound.

Bear in mind that I did not have any shortcuts in use, i didn’t even setup the focus. I didn’t change any settings in DND,

and it was at default. It was as if you took a new iPhone out of the box, turned on DND and notification alerts and call ringtones played at normal volume.

Literally the only thing changed by engaging DND was that it made the lock screen darker.

I tried various suggestions here and others I found online and none worked. I decided to completely erase the iPhone (save for the eSim). I decided to restore from a recent iCloud backup because I didn’t want to spend over an hour downloading all my apps, signing into everything and then setting up my home screens, widgets and settings, etc.

I was told by an  store employee in the past that if you erase and restore from an iCloud backup that software bugs wouldn’t come back. This was inaccurate, as I had assumed. But I trusted him since he works for the company.

So I made a last ditch effort. Completely erase the iPhone, again, and this time don’t restore any data, or iCloud backups.

This fixed DND in iOS 16.2 for me.

It also appears you may not have read Lawrence Finch's very precise instructions immediately above your most recent post.

"Do Not Disturb" is already built into Focus. All you need to do is customize it with what people or apps you want to be silenced or allowed through. You are not required to add any times to it if you don't want to.

And, the Focus button isn't one that can be removed from the Control Center.

You may want read this:

Use Focus on your iPhone or iPad - Apple Support

Hi @gtanita,

Go to your Iphone settings>select the Focus option>select do not disturb >modify settings from here.

You still have a simple on/off switch. It just takes it one step further by asking you which settings to apply, i.e. work, sleep, or the traditional DND option. The configuration options for each take just a minute or two, and you likely won't have to touch them again. When I'm working I just click on Focus > Work (which I took 2 minutes to setup). Now only my wife can contact me, and my work messaging app can notify me. Everything else is in "DND". To turn it off I just click on it again. It's literally an on/off switch. Another poster kindly explained how to get these setup earlier in this thread.

sleepnclass wrote:

So I made a last ditch effort. Completely erase the iPhone, again, and this time don’t restore any data, or iCloud backups.

This fixed DND in iOS 16.2 for me.

That would indicate that some of your data was corrupt and causing problems.

@gtanita,

please go to your settings> select notifications> turn off scheduled summary> turn off Notication Grouping. Please note you may still need to go through each app to accept toggle the notifications on or off which is easily done under settings>selecting an app> selecting notifications>.

Additionally, use Focus which is similar to DO NOT Disturb which is found under your settings as well.

The new IOS systems are using AI to notify , so grouping items the system sees you spend alot of time on may cause those apps to allows notifications easily in grouping so again ensure this is turned off so that you do not continue to receive notifications from apps you do not need to be notified by.

My last suggestion is from human thought .. under settings, go through each app, remove it , silence it , make sure its up to date. While it seems time consuming, you will benefit in the long run and so will your device. Our phones are mini handheld computers so checking for installed apps or updates is very beneficial. Checking your settings for new changes after updates is also benefical for you to learn the new software installed. I hope this helps.