KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 17 — It’s your long-awaited day off from work and you’re listening to music streaming from your phone when it is cut off suddenly by a notification from your colleague or your boss.
Worse, it’s not just one or two alerts but endless, making your muscles tighten and your arm spring up to chuck your phone.
Before you do that, try and remember how the technician at the gadget shop showed you how to silence those alerts.
But if you can’t, fret not. Here’s a step-by-step guide.
For iPhone users
Do not disturb
The iPhone’s ‘do not disturb’ mode quite literally means zero disturbance as it temporarily blocks all noises, vibrations and lights.
Don’t worry if you have set alarms in the iPhone clock application, it will still ring as normal. Otherwise, this is a perfect mode for a distraction-free sleep.
If you are absolutely sure that you do not want any phone calls, there is a setting that allows a call through if it comes from the same person within a three-minute window. Turn this off.
How to do it
Select: Settings > Do Not Disturb > Allow Repeated Calls
Focus Mode
For iPhone 15 users, there is the Focus Mode.
In Focus Mode only specified notifications and people can reach you. This means that the people who are not specified and contact you will be sent to voicemail.
When in use, you can customise your phone home screen so that it only has related applications.
Likewise, you can also add filters to Focus Mode. This will determine what information an application could show you.
For example, you could choose which calendar, mail, messages (you like to see) and Safari (which tab group you would like to see).
How to do it
Select: Settings > Focus
If you are a light sleeper
The silent mode button on iPhones is located on the upper left corner of the phone.
However, if you are a light sleeper, the iPhone’s silent mode only turns off the phone’s sound for calls and notifications but your phone will still vibrate, unless you turn the vibration off manually.
How to do it
Select: Settings > Sounds & Haptics > Haptics > Don’t play in silent mode
For Android users
There are similar functions that grant you the same peace ticket.
Turn off notifications from device settings. If you’ve never explored the settings tab, now you can tap around for ease of mind.
How to do it
Select: Settings > Notifications > App settings > Most recent (select which application to turn off notifications)
Lock Screen notifications
Ever feel like your entire mobile phone is overloaded with notifications? You can actually disable these ‘Lock Screen’ notifications.
How to do it
Select: Settings > Notifications > Local Screen notifications > Don’t show any notificationsDND (do not disturb)
For Android users, when this mode is switched on, users will not receive any sound, vibrations or visual alerts.
But be sure to specify a duration for when you want your mobile phone status to return to normal.
How to do it
Select: Settings > Sounds & Vibration > Do not disturb
Snooze a notification
This is an option for when you want to get notified about something in the future, but want to clear the notification at present.
How to do it
Select: Settings > Notifications > Allow notification snoozing
