Neglecting your iPhone’s Focus (formerly Do Not Disturb) settings and going about your business is easy. However, you’ll miss out on one of the best ways to reduce distractions and improve your quality of life while using your Apple devices.
Apple’s Focus feature primarily stops calls and notifications from apps and contacts except the ones you grant access to. Here, we’ll discuss why enabling Focus on your iPhone is a good idea. But if you don’t fancy it, remember you can easily turn it off.
1. Driving Focus Can Keep You Safe
If you own a car, you should set up the Driving Focus preset immediately. You might think all it does is stop phone calls and notifications, but that’s only a fraction of what it can do. It can send messages to your contacts to inform them you’re driving and currently unavailable, and it will stop you from accessing your phone while driving.
This could be incredibly helpful for reducing distractions. Phone notifications are designed to usepersuasive technologyto solicit reactions from us, conditioning us to look at them as soon as we hear them. You could find yourself picking up your phone to see notifications while driving. And even if you decide, for whatever reason, to use your phone, you have to turn off Driving Focus first.
Set up Driving Focus so that it automatically turns on when it detects that you’re driving. It can use cues like when you’re connected to your car’s Bluetooth or when you use CarPlay.
2. Focus Can Boost Your Productivity and Attentiveness
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Notifications and calls can get in the way of an otherwise productive work session. You might be only one Focus setting away from drastically improving your productivity.
You could use the Work Focus preset to help you zero in on your work. The great part is that Work Focus allows you to choose what apps you want to see on your Home Screen. So, if your work involves using your phone, you can remove social media apps you don’t need to reduce the chances of getting distracted.
Of course, Work Focus also provides exceptions to who can contact you and what apps can notify you when you’re working. Design it so it lets colleagues to still reach out to you.Organize your work contacts into a listand exclude them from the Focus block.
By default, activating Focus on your iPhone will activate Focus across all your Apple devices using that Apple ID.
3. Use Focus to Battle Phone Addiction
Smartphone addiction is a real problem in this age. It can wedge a gap between you and your loved ones and negatively affect your work and education. Luckily, your iPhone’s Focus feature is a tool you’re able to use to help combat this issue.
Because you may silence your phone, hide notifications, and, in some cases, bar easy access to your iPhone, Focus can really drive down the chances of youpicking up your phone in scenarios where you shouldn’t.
4. Sleep Focus Could Help You Sleep Better
iPhones have a Sleep Focus preset that works directly with the Health app. You can set up your bedtime and wake-up time to help you wind down before you sleep and monitor your sleep hours.
There are severalreasons not to use your phone in bed; some of them include harming your sleep cycle, raising stress levels, and potentially causing insomnia.
Sleep Focus, through Wind Down, makes the process automatic and seamless. You don’t need to go about fiddling with settings; it will automatically minimize distractions and prepare you to sleep once it reaches the predetermined time.
5. Hide Apps You Don’t Want People to See
Focus has a customization feature calledCustomize Screens. you may use it as a tool for additional privacy or content restriction. Customize Screens lets you choose what apps you want to see when your iPhone is in Focus. It could be useful for hiding apps you wouldn’t want your kids, for example, to see.
It’s not available for all Focus presets, but if you want to use Focus mode only for this reason, you should create your own Focus mode and edit its settings. Gather all the apps you want to show other users to separate pages on your Home Screen, head into your custom Focus mode’s settings, and tapChooseunder the Home Screen page layout.
6. Let Others Know When You’re Busy
Ignoring contacts can cause high anxiety and stress—and Apple knows this. That’s why it integrated ways to let people know you’re unavailable. When you open iMessage and try to text someone with Focus turned on, you’ll see a prompt at the bottom of the chat indicating that the contact has silenced notifications.
you may also take it a notch higher and turn on auto-replies in Focus settings. Type in a custom message, and it will automatically send it to anyone who texts you via iMessage.
One disadvantage of having Focus status enabled is that people can still break through your notifications and prompt you with theNotify Anywayoption. So, it’s worth disabling it if your contacts keep notifying you while you’re in Focus.
The auto-reply feature is only available for Driving Focus for now.
7. Set a Mood on Your iPhone With Focus Filters
Apart from changing your wallpapers, Lock Screen, and Home Screen layouts with Focus, you can also use it to turn on certain “filters” or settings on your phone.
When setting up a Focus, you’ll find a section at the bottom called Focus Filters, which affects how your phone and certain apps behave when you turn it on. Use it to automaticallychange your iPhone’s appearance from Light to Darkor toggle Low Power Mode.
This can set the mood for your phone and give it a new feel apart from the cosmetic differences you might be used to.
Absolve Yourself From Distractions With Focus
Distractions are annoying at best and dangerous in their worst form. Apple’s Focus feature helps reduce this as much as possible, letting you live a healthier, less stressful digital life.
If you don’t have these settings activated, you might be missing out on an important way to protect yourself from the various aspects of a phone that could hamper your productivity.
