Notifications on our devices are practically the easiest way to always get the latest updates from our apps and contacts. Without denying their usefulness, during certain events, meetings, social gatherings or those precious moments when you simply need some peace and quiet they can become very annoying.
The iPhone has a ‘Do Not Disturb’ mode you can use to silence it, but so does the Apple Watch. Don’t mistake it for Mute though – the two features are not the same. You can use Mute if you want to disable all notification sounds, but still allow alerts to use vibration and haptic feedback. DND can silence your iPhone and Watch completely and notifications will arrive in the background so you can view them later.
By default, the ‘Do Not Disturb’ feature is mirrored – this means turning it on/off on one device will also change it on the other. Even so, you might want to use DND just on one device, and you can easily do that too. Below, we’ll be exploring all available options ‘Do Not Disturb’ provides.
How to enable ‘Do Not Disturb’ on the Apple Watch
To turn on ‘Do Not Disturb’ on your wrist, press the digital crown on your Watch until the clock face is displayed (if it wasn’t already). Now swipe up from the bottom of the screen to view the glances.
Then navigate to your Settings glance by swiping right – it’s the last one. To enable ‘Do Not Disturb’ tap on the crescent moon icon.
Now you can return to the clock face by pressing the digital crown again. At the top of the screen, you’ll see the crescent moon icon which shows DND is enabled on your Watch.
How to disable mirroring for ‘Do Not Disturb’ on your iPhone
Mirroring for DND is enabled by default, which means the feature enables on both your Watch and iPhone, regardless on which of the two devices you actually turned it on.
If you want to use ‘Do Not Disturb’ separately on your devices, you’ll have to disable the mirroring function. If DND is active on your iPhone you’ll see a crescent moon icon shown in the status bar.
To turn off mirroring for ‘Do Not Disturb’ on your iPhone, launch the Watch app and go to General -> Do Not Disturb.
Simply toggle off the ‘Mirror iPhone’ function and from then on you can set ‘Do Not Disturb’ on your devices separately.
You should also be aware that if you have a custom schedule set for ‘Do Not Disturb’ on your iPhone and the mirroring function is turned off, your Watch won’t follow the schedule. Even so, you can easily re-enable the ‘Mirror iPhone’ function when you want it to enter DND during the same scheduled intervals as your phone.
How are you using ‘Do Not Disturb’ on your Watch and iPhone? Or do you prefer Mute instead? Share your thoughts in the comments section below, or leave us a message on Facebook, Twitter or Google+.
