Emergency bypass not working

Solved! Go to contacts>pick contact you want the bypass to work for>edit>text tone>enable emergency bypass. Make sure to have an alert tone selected in the text tone screen.

I had the same issue, only 1 contact I was not getting the 'ping' noise for the ring on text for my fiance. When he called it worked and everyone else I had on emergency by pass was fine.

The solution I found was that I went to his text messages, clicked on his face at the top middle with his image, then I noticed the 'Hide Alerts' was turned on. Who knows why this was on because I didnt do it. Anyways, I turned it off, then closed my phone to have it in lock screen. I had him text me to test it and it worked! Make sure to send the text message while in lock screen, if you have the phone open it won't ping.

Hope this helps!

Just got off the phone with Apple and this solution worked for me!

Settings.. General.. Transfer or Reset.. Reset.. Reset All Settings

Then setup the contact again for Emergency Bypass. Worked like a charm and didn’t lose anything else important!

I was going crazy but just figured out my issue with this. I believe, prior to the update there was just one emergency bypass button. Now it is listed in the text tone section and the ringtone section. Make sure it’s enabled in both places. 🤦‍♀️ I enabled it under text tones as well and it’s now working.

SOLVED & FIXED! this may be a temporary fix to the bug, and you might need to do it more than once.

Here’s how: settings>notifications>notification style

First choose Phone. Toggle allow notifications On/Off/On

Return to Notifycation Style screen

choose Messages

Toggle On/Off/On all options 👉🏼especially Critical Alerts.

Make sure it’s green.

Have your ER contact send a text to test the feature and be sure you don’t have their messages open while doing so, and volume up.

So I may have found the problem. When you push the volume down, but nothing is playing such as a video or something with audio, it pulls the ringer volume down, even if you are on silent. If you do an up volume to raise the volume, it will say ringer in the information window at the top of the screen as long as nothing with audio is playing. This will make your Bypass notifications have volume and you can adjust how loud it actually is. So my mistake was thinking I was turning down video volume, when I was actually turning down bypass ringer volume. I hope that makes sense? I don’t know how the lock sound option in the sound menu will change the above, but I could see where it might.

I tried everything that has been mentioned in this thread, in addition to some others found on a Mac site, like turning off the notifications and then back on. Nothing worked. I ended up resetting and restoring from a backup. Kind of a pain, but in the end, it worked. 14ProMax 17.3

Omg! Thank you Chica05!! This worked for me!! I didn’t turn on the “Hide alerts” under text messages either! Toggled it off and now emergency bypass is working! Thank you! 🙏🏻

Hi JayArnold,

Here are the instructions for enabling that feature, and it should work for text messages:

"Allow calls from emergency contacts when notifications are silenced

You can allow sounds and vibrations from emergency contacts to come through even when your iPhone or notifications are silenced.

1. Open Contacts .
2. Select a contact, then tap Edit.
3. Tap Ringtone or Text Tone, then turn on Emergency Bypass.
4. Or, set up your Medical ID and identify an emergency contact."

Allow or silence notifications for a Focus on iPhone - Apple Support

If it's still not working, you can contact Apple Support to investigate this further for you:

Get Support

Cheers!

End of November and iOS 17 for iPhones still gave this bug for me.

I contacted Apple support and it was frustrating that who I talked to didn’t understand the problem, it was like talking to Android user.

He asked me that besides having the bypass setting on the person, to add that person in the focus setting!!!

Since when do we have to program one function in two settings?

I wish I could go back to iOS 16. It was more reliable in the operation.

I just went to my settings - notifications - scrolled down the list to WhatsApp (that’s what isn’t working for me ) and I found I had WhatsApp notifications switched off - I’ve just switched it on and my phone is on silent with volume down.. I will report back! 🤞

Hello JayArnold,

If those steps don't work out, then it would be best to contact Apple Support directly: Get Support

They'll need to take it from here.

Take care.

This last update fixed my issue.

Im having the same issues apple peeps although some of my contacts with emergency bypass work, and some don't. It's my wife so maybe not a bad thing sometimes but she's my emergency contact and it's not notifying me on my apple watch when she texts me. She can call and it works, just the text. Seems to be a reasonably widespread issue as I've seen multiple posts on this topic in the last few weeks as of 11-14-23.

Please help us non ai generated beings.

This worked for me!! But it was annoying to reset all my settings. Didn't lose anything important but I anticipate it will take me a while to get back everything I had set up.