If you’re like me, you can’t stand it Your iPhone constantly warns you about meaningless messages. And for a long time, you wondered how to get your phone to only notify you of the things you consider essential and keep everything else quiet.
In 2021, Apple released many new features in iOS 15, one of which is my favorite feature on my iPhone: Spotlight. Focus allows iPhone users to create “modes” on their phones to customize which notifications are most important and when they’ll notify you.
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To maximize the benefits of Spotlight mode, you’ll need to customize it to suit your needs. I’ll show you how to do that and tell you how I use it on my iPhone.
How to Use Focus on Your iPhone
What you need: To set up this feature, you need an iPhone running iOS 15 or later. If you are using a MacMacBook, or iPad running macOS Monterey, iPadOS 15 or later, the steps are the same. This will take about 10 to 20 minutes.
To access Focus modes on your iPhone, simply open the settings app. You will then see a Spotlight tab in the second group of settings.
In the Spotlight tab you will find several available Spotlight modes that you can customize — Sleep, Personal, and Work. If you want more Focus modes, you can create one by clicking the plus sign in the top right corner.
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After deciding to create a Spotlight mode, you can choose from a list of modes such as Driving, Gaming or Reading, or you can create a custom name and choose an icon that matches the mood Your focus.
From there, you can customize Spotlight mode by allowing notifications from certain apps and people, or by muting notifications from certain apps and people when you turn on Spotlight mode. that specific.
I like my Spotlight mode to allow notifications from certain people and apps because the list of notifications I want to receive is much shorter than the ones I don’t.
You can schedule Focus modes by manually setting how long you want Focus mode to turn on or off automatically. Or you can use Smart Activation, which allows your phone to turn on Spotlight mode depending on your location or the app you’re using.
You can enable Sharing across devices and Spotlight Status when you set up Spotlight mode. By sharing on your other devices, the Spotlight modes you set up on one Apple device will be shared on your other devices if they are all registered with the same Apple ID.
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With Spotlight Status, you can notify others when you turn on Spotlight mode, which will turn off their notifications on your device. For example, if you’ve muted a message from one of your contacts while in Personal Spotlight mode, it will show in their iMessage app that you’ve muted the notification.
But be careful — if you’ve muted notifications from someone and they sent you a message, their iPhone will give them the option to “Notify anyway”. If they click it, you will be notified of their message. For some of my Focus modes, I’ve turned it off because there’s usually a reason I don’t want to be notified of someone’s messages.
If they still choose not to notify you, or if you have Spotlight Status turned off, their notifications will still appear in Notification Center, but your phone won’t ring or vibrate.
This is how I focus
I was born in 2001, so I’m definitely a member of Generation Z, and I’m always on the phone. But I was overwhelmed by the notifications. Because I regularly check my phone throughout the day, I always see the notifications that I want to be delivered to the Notification Center quietly. This way, I have regained control of my phone because I no longer feel compelled to check notifications as soon as it arrives.
My iPhone has four Focus modes: Do Not Disturb, Cool, Work, and Sleep. I schedule four of them so that as soon as one goes off, the other will turn on. At 11:45 p.m. on weeknights, my Sleep Focus mode turns on. It dims my phone screen and reminds me it’s time to rest and get ready for bed.
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At 8:30 a.m. weekdays, my Focus on Work mode turns on to prepare me for the start of the workday. I have notifications turned on for Slack and Outlook, so if I’m not next to my laptop, I still know there’s an important message. At 5:15 p.m. it shuts off and reminds me it’s time to finish what I’m doing.
I work with people in different time zones, and receiving emails and Slack notifications can be overwhelming when I’m trying to unplug from the workday. This focus of work has helped me establish boundaries between phone, sanity, and work obligations.
Do Not Disturb turns on late in the evening at 8:00pm. No apps send notifications, and Spotlight helps me focus on evening activities like cleaning, watching movies, going out with family, or having dinner with minimal distractions.
How centralized is the ZDNET team?
Allison Murray, a writer at ZDNET, says her most useful Spotlight mode is Work Spotlight, which she has set up on her iPhone. She says her Focus on Work mode mutes all calls, texts, and social media notifications to keep her workday distraction-free. She says the Work Focus mode is so useful that she sometimes forgets she has a phone when she turns it on.
sabrina ortiz, one of our contributing editors, always has Focus on Do Not Disturb mode on unless she’s waiting for a call. She said she told her friends and family that if they needed her, call twice in a row, so the call would bypass her Do Not Disturb setting.
Frequently asked questions
Can I enable or disable Focus Mode without opening Settings?
Yes you can. Swipe down on the right side of the screen to open the Control Center. On the left side of the screen you will see where you can see which Focus Mode is currently enabled. If you tap it, you can enable another Focus Mode, disable the current Focus Mode, or click the + sign at the bottom of the screen to create a new Focus Mode.
Do Focus modes turn off my alarms?
Are not. None of your Spotlight settings will affect alarms, timers, or reminders in the Health or Reminders apps. As long as your reminders and alarms are set to the correct date and time and the bell is loud enough, you’ll hear them. If you’ve set up a sleep schedule in the Health app, your Sleep Focus mode will automatically sync with your bedtime and wake-up times.
Who can see my Spotlight Status?
Apple never reveals exactly which apps show your Focus Status. But we do know that your contacts can see when you turn off iMessage notifications. If you open a contact’s contact card, you can specifically turn off your Spotlight Status for that person.
