- [Garrick] There are probably several times

during the course of a day

when you don't want to be interrupted

with a phone call, or a text message, or an email,

or by any other app on your iOS device

that might want your attention.

Now you could just turn your phone off, of course,

but then you might miss truly urgent or important calls.

You could put your phone in silent mode,

but it might still vibrate

if you don't manually go in and turn vibration off,

and you'll still receive notifications

unless you go in and turn notifications off.

So, let's instead take a look at a feature

called focus mode,

which allows you to be much more selective

about which notifications you do and don't want to see

based on what you're doing at the time.

So we'll start by going into settings

and here we'll find focus.

Now there are a couple

of default suggestions for focus options here,

but you can also create your own custom focuses

by tapping the plus button here

in the upper right-hand corner.

Essentially though, each focus option

lets you determine which apps can send notifications

and who in your contacts can contact you

when that focus is enabled.

So for example, I'll select work.

Now here at the top

you can first pick the people

who will be able to get through to you

when you have this focus enabled,

so you can tap people,

and then you may see some suggestions

of the people you communicate with the most

by phone or text or FaceTime.

If necessary, you can remove people here

that you don't want to be able to contact you,

or you can tap add people

and select people from your contact list

who will be able to get through to you

while in this focus mode.

Now at the top here,

the default is allow notifications from,

but you can also switch this to silence notifications from

if you instead want to mute people that you've added here.

Now here under phone calls,

you can choose who can get through to you with a phone call.

The default here is everybody,

which I kind of think defeats the purpose

of using focus mode,

so you probably want to choose one of the other options here.

For example, you could select favorites,

so anyone you've added to your favorites in the phone app

will get through.

You can also choose to allow specific groups

if you've created groups in your contacts app,

so you might want to create a group of people

who can always get in touch with you.

In this case, I'll just choose allowed people only,

so only the people that I've added to this focus here

will be able to get through to me.

Now with that enabled, we have this repeated calls area,

and this is really important to leave on in my opinion.

With this enabled, if you receive a second call

from the same number within three minutes of the first call,

your phone will ring,

so if there's an emergency or urgent event

and someone is trying to get ahold of you

by calling repeatedly,

they'll get through on the second call

as long as it's within three minutes,

and I prefer to leave that option on.

I'll tap work focus at the top

to go back to the main work focus screen.

The next area here is apps,

and those are the apps that are allowed

to send notifications while this focus is active.

Again, you may see some suggestions here

of the apps you use the most often.

You can of course tap the minus button

on them to remove any.

Now since this is the work focus that I'm working on,

I want to add any of the apps that I use for work.

For example, we have a suggestion here for Microsoft Teams,

I'll check that.

I probably want to use my calendar,

but everything else here isn't work related.

I'll tap done,

so these are the apps

I'll be able to receive notifications from

when I have the work focus enabled.

So be sure to take a moment to think

about what apps you use daily while working

and add them here.

You can also enable the switch to

allow time sensitive notifications,

so even if you don't list an app up here,

if it sends a notification

that's important right now,

you'll still get it.

This might be an alert from a ride sharing app

letting you know that your car is arriving,

or a notification

that someone is ringing your smart doorbell.

It's kind of hard to say which apps

will be considered time sensitive,

so I suggest leaving this on

unless you find that non-important notifications

are getting through.

All right, let's go back.

Now here we have options,

and from here you can choose

to show notifications on the lock screen,

so you can pick up your phone

and see notifications that were silenced.

You can also choose to dim the lock screen

when this focus is enabled,

which might be more useful for a focus like a bedtime focus

so your phone doesn't come up to full brightness

when you get notifications.

And you can also hide the numbers

that appear on the apps

that indicate how many messages you have,

which can be kind of distracting.

I'll leave all of those off for now.

Next, you can customize your lock in a home screen

when you have this focus mode enabled.

This can visually remind you that you have a focus enabled

or you can select a lock screen that you can customize

to display information related to this focus mode.

So for example, if I choose to create this new lock screen,

this one displays my calendar and my reminders,

so maybe when I'm in work mode,

I'll want to see that information.

So I'll tap add,

and maybe I'll just set that as a wallpaper pair.

Now next to that,

you can also create custom home screen pages

that are displayed in this focus.

So for example,

you could arrange all of your work apps onto a single screen

and move non-work apps like social media,

video players, and games to their own screens.

You might want to take some time arranging your home screens

into work apps, leisure apps,

and other screens for different focus modes.

So let's imagine that I did that,

these are the actual screens

that I have right now on my phone,

but maybe in work mode,

I only want to be able to see this screen,

so I'll select that and tap done.

Next, you have the ability to add a schedule

to automatically turn on this focus mode,

so you can schedule this focus mode

to start and end at specific times,

or choose a specific location for it to be enabled.

You can also select apps

so that opening up a specific app will enable the focus.

And we also have a smart activation option

that will have your device turn on this focus automatically

at certain times of the day,

based on your patterns like where you physically are

and which apps you're using,

so you can play around with those if you like.

And lastly here we have focus filters,

which allow you to filter the content shown in certain apps,

for example, mail.

So even though you can view and read mail

from all of your accounts in the mail app,

here you can select which ones you'll be able to see

when using the work focus.

So maybe all of my work emails come into my Gmail account

and my personal emails come into my iCloud account,

so while I'm in my work focus,

I only want to see my Gmail emails.

And you can add more focus filters if you want to,

so be sure to take some time to view these filters

and play around them.

But for now, my focus is ready.

Let's go back to the main focus screen.

From here I can set up my other focus modes

like personal and sleep.

I'll just leave those as is for now.

Now below that we have this share across devices switch,

which means turning focus on or off from your iPhone

will enable or disable it on your iPad or Mac,

or other devices where you're signed

into the same iCloud account.

So if I turn on work mode on my iPhone,

work mode will also be enabled on my Mac and my iPad.

Under that we have focus status,

and this is where you can enable or disable the option

that lets people know you have notifications silenced.

If I tap learn more,

here you can see an example

of what that message will look like to others.

So here you can see

that it says if someone tries to text you,

they'll see this message saying

that you have notifications silenced,

and they won't get any other info

other than you have notifications silenced,

it won't say what focus mode you're using or anything else.

All right, let's go back to the home screen.

And anytime I want to enable a focus mode,

I can pull down on control center,

and here we'll find the focus button.

Now, if you just want to enable do not disturb,

tap the moon icon and all notifications will be silenced.

I'll turn that back off.

To enable one of your focus modes,

tap where it says focus

and here you can choose which focus to enable.

I'll select work.

Notice I can already tell

that my home screen color and background is changed,

same goes for my lock screen.

And now that the work focus is enabled,

I'll only see notifications

from the people and apps I've specified.

And notice since I only enabled the first home screen,

when I swipe to the left,

I don't see my other home screens,

I only see the app library.

To turn off your focus,

just go back to control center

and tap the circle next to, work in this case,

to turn that off, so it's that easy.

And I should also mention that if you tap focus

and then tap the three dot button next to the focus,

you'll see some other options,

and these options depend on a few things.

First, we have the for one hour setting

which does exactly what it says,

select that and your focus will be enabled for an hour

and then automatically turn off,

letting you receive notifications again.

The second option here will either say until this evening

or until this morning,

or it might even say until this afternoon,

depending on what time of day it is.

But it basically just enables the focus for a few hours,