Any distraction is undesirable if you want to study before your studies or have to write an important report. With Do Not Disturb on the Mac, you can continue working in peace.
Work undisturbed on your Mac with Do Not Disturb
You usually receive the most notifications in a day on your iPhone, but the number of notifications can also increase quickly on the Mac. You can use the Do Not Disturb function to block you from all incoming emails and messages.
You can activate Do Not Disturb temporarily in two ways. First of all, you can enable Do Not Disturb by holding down the Option key and clicking the right-most icon in the bar at the top. You can open the message window via this icon.
You can see that Do Not Disturb is on when the three lines of the icon turn gray, instead of black. A second option is to open the message window and scroll up a bit via your trackpad.
This will bring up the Night Shift and Do Not Disturb buttons. Set the slider behind Do Not Disturb to ‘on’. Once you enable Do Not Disturb in this way, it will remain enabled until the next day.
Schedule Do Not Disturb on Mac
Do you want to be structurally not disturbed at certain times? Then it is more convenient to activate Do Not Disturb at scheduled times. You plan this as follows.
- Open ‘System Preferences’ via your Dock or the Apple icon in the menu bar;
- Open the ‘Notifications’ menu;
- Under the heading ‘Enable’ Do Not Disturb ‘, tick the box with a from-to-time. Then enter the times between which Do Not Disturb should be switched on;
- Check whether the function should also work when your Mac is in sleep mode and / or when your Mac is connected to a TV or projector.
From now on, your Mac will automatically switch Do Not Disturb on and off between the times you have specified. Handy, because you don’t have to think about it that way and you can get started undisturbed. Finally, you can indicate whether you want calls to be allowed.
Here you have the choice to check that calls from everyone will or will not come through, or that only repeated calls from someone will come through or not. In that case, a second call from someone will not be silenced within three minutes.
More helpful macOS tips
In our tip overview you will find many more macOS tips, such as our Mac beginner’s guide to getting the most out of your computer or an explanation of how to take screenshots on your Mac.