The Focus feature film Apple introduce in this fall ’s operating system updates to encompass Do Not Disturb and Driving modes has its knocker , like Macworld ’s Jason Cross , who argues it requires too much effort to manage . ( interpret his review at “ Apple ’s Focus style is too complicated . Here ’s how to make it better . ” )
A case in detail — and how to solve it — bump across my devices recently when hoi polloi texting me using iMessage received the alert , “ Glenn has notification silenced . ” But I did not ? Or at least I thought so .
The problem was a compounding of factor , including that I ’m not yet run macOS 12 Monterey on my primary Mac , an M1 Mac mini , which is launch the in vogue version of macOS 11 Big Sur . I have iOS 15 installed on my iPhone , iPadOS 15 on my iPad mini , and macOS 12 on an M1 MacBook Air . Big Sur only shows Do Not Disturb in the Control Center and other locations .
On my iPhone , where someone told me I had notifications silenced , I checked :
Then I remembered : the old day , I had turned on Do Not stir up in Focus while using AirPlay for my household to watch a television set show from my MacBook Air . I had never go back and disabled Do Not Disturb .
surely enough , when I checked that Mac with Monterey installed , in the Notification & Focus preference loony toons ’s Focus tab , the Share Focus Status checkbox was selected — I did n’t call back selecting it , but there you go .
Even though my iPhone did n’t have Share Across Devices enabled , the fact thatonedevice logged into iCloud with the same accountdidmean that all other equipment shared the Focus setting .
That ’s good : the Share Across Devices / Share Focus Status options is … not shared across equipment .
Disabling Share Focus Status and reverse off Do Not Disturb in Focus solved the trouble .
Thanks to several sept on Twitter who helped debug this interaction , includingBenjamin ChaitandTJ Connelly .
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