Focus mode has been around since iOS 15 and is an extension of the Do Not Disturb feature. The difference is that with Focus you choose whether you want to receive notifications from certain people (or not). In this week’s iPhone tips, we show you how to get even more out of it!
This is the Focus mode on your iPhone
You use the Focus function to avoid being distracted. Handy if you need to concentrate on your work, are temporarily away from your iPhone or if you want to enjoy a quiet evening.
Of course you can also choose to turn off your iPhone or switch on Airplane mode. But that is not always convenient, because you will not receive any messages or notifications at all. Sometimes you want certain friends or family to always be able to reach you. Then the Focus function comes into play.
Your iPhone has a number of default options for you to choose from, including Driving, Gaming, Mindfulness, Sleep, Work, and Reading. You can also create a Focus yourself and then choose a name, color and symbol yourself.
If you have created a Focus , it will be synchronized with your other Apple devices. In general, that’s useful, but you can also turn it off. In addition, others can see that you have enabled Focus mode, but you can also disable that.
Do you always want to stay informed of the latest tips for your iPhone, AirPods or Apple Watch? Sign up for our newsletter, so that you discover new features every week!
1. Create a Focus
The first of these iPhone tips is about creating a Focus. You can make a Focus as extensive as you want, as you can see in the following tips. However, the basis of creating a Focus is very simple. You do this as follows:
- Open the Settings app and tap ‘Focus’;
- Tap the plus sign at the top right;
- Choose one of the suggestions or tap ‘Custom’;
- In the latter case, you choose a name, color and symbol yourself.
The Focus has now been created, you just have to adjust a few things. What you adjust depends on what you want to achieve with the Focus. You can see some examples in the following tips.
2. A Focus for an undisturbed night’s sleep
Do you have a friend who sends all kinds of unimportant texts in the middle of the night? Then you can temporarily mute his chat and any group chats he’s in. But creating a Focus works even better. You do this in the following way:
- Open the Settings app and tap ‘Focus’;
- Tap the plus sign in the top right and tap Sleep;
- Tap on ‘Adjust focus’ and then on ‘People’;
- Tap on ‘Add’ and select the contacts who are allowed to disturb you;
- Tap on ‘Done’.
By the way, you can also choose to only mute notifications from specific people. In that case, choose ‘Silence notifications from’.
All you have to do is enter from what time until what time the Focus should be active. Here’s what you do in the Health app:
- Open the Health app and tap “Sleep”;
- Scroll down and tap “Full schedule and options”;
- Make sure “Sleep schedule” and “Use sleep focus schedule” are turned on;
- Under ‘Full schedule’, enter the start and end time.
Extra tip for these iPhone tips: You can always start a Focus that has been created manually. To do this, open the Control Panel (swipe down from the top right of your screen) and tap ‘Focus’. In the list that appears, tap the Focus you want to enable.
3. Automatically change background when one turns on Focus
You can choose to change the background of your iPhone when a Focus is activated. That’s quite a good idea. If you don’t do that and everything continues to look as always, you may not realize that a Focus is active. We use the Focus Sleep from the previous tip as an example:
- Open the Settings app, tap ‘Focus’ and then ‘Sleep’;
- Under ‘ADJUST SCREENS’, tap the left ‘Choose’;
- Choose a lock screen and tap ‘Add’ at the top right;
- Tap Set as Wallpaper Pair.
One more tip for these iPhone tips: Tap “Options” below the screens for a few extra settings. Here you can enable only the most important information to be shown on the lock screen and indicate whether or not you want to see the time.
4. Focus with Smart Activation
So you can have a Focus switch on and off automatically at certain times, but sometimes it is more convenient if a Focus switches on automatically when you arrive somewhere. And also turns off again when you leave there. For example, this is a good idea for the Work Focus:
- Open the Settings app, tap ‘Focus’ and then ‘Work’;
- Scroll down and tap “Smart Activation”;
- Enable “Smart Activation” and tap “Back”;
- Tap on ‘Add schedule’ and tap on ‘Location’;
- Add the desired location and tap ‘Done’;
As you can see, you also have the option to activate the Focus when you open a certain app. And of course you can also combine the three options.
5. Remove a Focus
The last of this week’s iPhone tips is for when you’ve created a Focus, only to find it’s not very useful in practice. Fortunately, in that case you can easily remove the Focus again. You do that like this:
- Open the Settings app and tap ‘Focus’;
- Tap the Focus you want to delete;
- Scroll all the way down;
- Tap ‘Remove focus’ and confirm your choice.
