Too many notifications that constantly interrupt you? With Apple Intelligence, your iPhone can smartly distinguish between important and less important notifications. The ‘Limit interruptions’ focus mode understands the content of your messages and only lets through the really urgent notifications, such as a message that you have to pick up your child from daycare early or that your girlfriend will be at the door in a moment.
Apple Intelligence uses deep knowledge to show you information that matters most to you. Notifications are automatically summarized and prioritized so you can quickly see what’s really waiting, which is especially useful for active group conversations, urgent messages or news updates.
Limit interruptions using focus
The Limit Interruptions focus understands the content of your notifications and shows only the most important notifications. Less important reports are kept quiet. Ideal if you are at work or if you do not want to receive notifications, only the most important ones.
Activate Apple Intelligence focus for notifications
The Limit Interruptions focus is automatically added to the list of focuses once you activate Apple Intelligence on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac. You can find this focus under (System) Settings and you can of course also enable it via the control panel.
- Open Settings on your iPhone or iPad
- Navigate to ‘Focus’
- Tap ‘Limit interruptions’
On a Mac, you can set and manage this focus via ▸ System Settings ▸ Focus ▸ Limit Interruptions.
Minimize interruptions personalize
You can of course further personalize this focus and, for example, always give certain apps and people access to send notifications. To do this, follow the steps above to open focus in the settings and adjust the desired people and apps. You can also link the focus to a watch face, background and you can hide app pages on your iPhone or iPad. This works in the same way as all other focus components, more information can be found here.
Intelligent passage and holding still
Not only can you use Apple Intelligence in conjunction with the Limit Interruptions focus? You can also select the option ‘Intelligent passage and holding still‘ to use.
When this setting is enabled and focus is active, it intelligently allows important notifications to interrupt you and silences non-important notifications. Ideal if you still want to receive urgent notifications during ‘Do Not Disturb’.
Enable focus
You can quickly enable focus on an iPhone, iPad, or Mac manually from the Control Center. Open Control Center, tap or click the Focus button (the crescent moon symbol), then choose your preferred focus mode such as Limit Interruptions, Do Not Disturb, Personal, or Sleep. Is a focus already active? You will then see this in the crescent moon symbol in your status bar and you can similarly tap the active focus via the control panel to switch it off.
To enable focus automatically, open (system) settings ▸ Focus ▸ select a focus mode and choose ‘Add schedule’. You can then set a time schedule here (for example every working day from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.), a location (“When you get home”) or an app as a trigger (so that the focus activates when you open a certain app). This way you don’t have to switch anything on manually and your concentration runs automatically without interruptions