While Apple’s Focus feature is a great way to minimize distractions and silence notifications, you may unintentionally make your friends feel like you’re ignoring them at times. In such situations, you can use the “Share Focus Status” setting on your iPhone.
What Is “Share Focus Status” on an iPhone?
Apple’s Focus feature allows you to silence iPhone notifications from specific apps and people based on the time of the day or the location you’re currently at. However, if someone is continuously trying to reach you, and you’re unable to respond quickly, it’s human nature for them to get worried.
This is where the “Share Focus Status” setting comes in clutch. It allows apps to check whether you’ve enabled a Focus mode on your iPhone. If you do, anyone messaging you will be informed that you currently have your notifications silenced.
In case of an emergency, they can choose to message you regardless by tapping Notify Anyway. Your Focus status is only shared when you have a Focus mode enabled and once you’ve given a supported third-party app permission to share it. By default, your Focus status appears in the Messages app.
How to Share Your Focus Status
Most iPhone users tend to miss the “Share Focus Status” setting when configuring the Focus feature on iOS. Fortunately, enabling it takes only a couple of seconds.
- Go to Settings > Focus.
- Toggle on the switch next to Share Across Devices, as it must be enabled to share your Focus status.
- Tap Focus Status and toggle on the switch next to Share Focus Status.
- Under Share From, you can choose which Focus profiles can share your Focus status.
For instance, if you use Do Not Disturb at night to ensure uninterrupted sleep but want your contacts to know you’ve silenced your notifications, simply toggle on the switch next to Do Not Disturb.
How to Turn Off Your Focus Status
If you’d like to turn off your Focus status entirely, all you need to do is repeat the above steps (Settings > Focus > Focus Status) and toggle it off.
While sharing your Focus status is a great way to let people know you’re busy, some may misuse the “Notify Anyway” option, and you’ll end up getting distracted. In this case, you can choose which contacts you don’t want to share your Focus status with in the Messages app.
- Open a conversation with the contact in the Messages app.
- Tap their profile picture at the top of the screen.
- Toggle off the switch next to Share Focus Status.
Unfortunately, besides Apple’s native apps like Messages, barely any third-party apps support the Focus status feature. Most apps have introduced similar features, though. For example, you can activate quiet mode on Instagram to pause all notifications and inform people that you won’t get alerts for any direct messages.
