Turn do not disturb focus OFF permanently

Many people are having trouble with do not disturb . I did not activate this and have missed several important calls… please just tell me where the off button is and then how to disable or delete this feature!!!!!

Look at my January 25 post with a screenshot of the control center with the DND button circled in green.

This problem needs a "Do Not Disturb" on/off toggle.

I've followed a dozen sets of recommendations for working around this "feature", and as I check again I see "Do Not Disturb on". I've missed a many calls and messages from my contractor, I can't imagine what this will do to my new business.

Absolutely! One of the dumber of their “bright” upgrades. Someone needed extra whistles? Ridiculous, ON and OFF, then an option, a separate section for those with more time than actual need.

Hello, I have also missed calls and have lost money while THE APP WAS ON. ONLY I DID NOT TURN IT ON AND IT CONTINUES TOO APPEAR IN MY TOP SCREEN RANDOMLY. The only reason for this is I believe the proximity to the flashlight and my fat little porkpickers are activating the DND… still need an out in settings and not so accessible. Or the turn the thing off when you don’t want too be bothered… still the most useless feature of the phone. I’ve spent enough time on this now I just scan my devices for the DREADED CRESCENT MOON!

You apparently didn’t read my reply to your previous post, so here it is again:

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 (see below, the button in the green circle). You can optionally set one or more schedules by going to:

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

Then you didn’t turn off DND using the DND button on the Control Center screen. If you turn it off it is OFF forever, until you turn it back on using that same button.

Perhaps the reason you are missing calls has nothing to do with DND:

Troubleshooting No Ring issues

Most basic first: Have you checked the mute switch on the left side of the phone above the volume buttons, and adjusted the ring volume with the volume buttons while viewing the Home screen? (You must be on the Home screen to adjust the ringer volume). 

If it rings but the ring isn’t loud enough: 

• First check the speakers. Go to Settings/Sounds & Haptics/Ringtone/Classic and tap Old Phone as a test. If it is loud enough then change it to whatever you want.
• Go to Settings/Face ID & Passcode, enter your passcode, and look at the switch for Attention Aware Features. When this is on sounds will be lowered when the phone sees that you are looking at the screen.

If there is no ring at all:

Are there missed calls in Phone/Recents on the phone? If they are not the problem is in the network, because the calls aren’t getting to your phone. Contact your carrier: 

• check with your carrier that they don’t have a local outage, and that you didn’t have any settings that would have immediately invoked voicemail, such as call forwarding.
• check up on them at Down Detector - Crowdsourced outage checker

If they are in Recents here’s what to check in addition:

• Go to Settings/Phone. There’s a switch for Silence Unknown Callers. If it is on any calls from numbers not in your contacts will go directly to voicemail.
  • If you keep it on, in Settings/Phone make sure Dial Assist is enabled; it is needed to accurately match an incoming call to a contact.
  • Remember that banks, doctors and other professionals may not call you from the same number that you have in your contacts for them.
  • As some users have discovered, turning it on, then off sometimes helps.
• Also in Settings/Phone: Make sure Call Forwarding is off.
• Make sure Do Not Disturb is off:
  • iOS 14 & older: Go to Settings/Do not Disturb. Turn it off if it is on. Also turn off Scheduled. With both off none of the other switches there matter.
  • iOS 15: Go to Settings/Focus, and verify that all focus settings are disabled.
  • iOS 16: Open the Control Center and turn off the button next to the word Focus.
• Go to Settings/Sounds & Haptics. Make sure there is a sound assigned to Ringtone.
• Go to Settings/Accessibility/Touch/Call Audio Routing and make sure Auto-Answer Calls is off.
• Go to Settings/Screen Time/Communications Limits. Tap each of the 2 entries and make sure both are “Everyone"
• Restart your phone-->Restart your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch - Apple Support
• If all else fails, talk your carrier into replacing your SIM card (thanks to ASC user DShelbyD)

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 (see below, the button in the green circle). You can optionally set one or more schedules by going to:

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

Why? Just why? Can we say OVERKILL.

msallbzness wrote:

Why? Just why? Can we say OVERKILL.

I’ll tell you why.

When Apple first added DND it was either on or off.

But users complained that was useless, at least it needed the ability to set a schedule, so Apple added scheduling to DND.

But users complained that there were different scenarios where they would want to use DND, such as at school, at work, driving, out to dinner, etc.

So Apple added Focus to meet the demands of these users.

If you don’t like it, complain to the users who wanted these features.

Boy would I really like DND to work as intended. But not only does it decide to turn itself on outside of the scheduled time, but apparently is the "master" Focus mode and causes others to change. I woke up this morning and Sleep Focus was turned off because the DND schedule was done, despite still in my Sleep window.

All I can say is that I'm glad I'm just playing around with iOS/WatchOS and am still using my Android as my REAL phone.