How To Use Do Not Disturb (DND) on iPhone and iPad?

Getting a totally unnecessary and unwanted call from an unknown salesperson during an important meeting can turn out to be disastrous. How often can we keep turning our phones to silent mode and back to ringing mode? Could be quite a headache, right?

Well if these are problems we are facing, then do not worry, there is a godsent feature on our iPhones and iPads, and what is it known as? Yes, you guessed it right, it’s the DND Mode! Also known as a short form for, Do Not Disturb.

Do Not Disturb is a feature that can tremendously make things easier for you. So what is DND, how do we toggle it, what does it do? Must be a lot of questions in your mind, let us find them all out in our today’s guide of “How To”.

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How To Use Do Not Disturb (DND) on iPhone and iPad?

1. What is Do Not Disturb?

So to start with what DND is? DND, or Do Not Disturb mode on iPhones and iPad does almost exactly what the name says, it goes into a mode where it will not disturb you.

Now, what does disturbing mean? DIsturbing in terms of an iPhone or iPad can be taken as notifications that come on your device and make a sound, or vibration or even pop-ups on the screen that you are working on.

This includes any calls incoming, any SMS via notifications or bubbles, any application notifications, etc.

So to prevent all these calls and SMS and notifications, there is one simple tool that can help them all go to a waiting hall till allow them to appear again, and that is called the Do Not Disturb or DND.

[Note: Alarms that you have set using the ‘clock’ application will ring/vibrate despite the DND settings being turned ON]

Now that we know what basically Do Not Disturb is, let us move on to our next step, that is, how to turn it on.

2. How to turn on DND?

So if your question now appears to be, knowing what it is, now how do I turn on the DND on my iPhone or iPad?

• Using the settings

As usual, most of our on-device features work from the settings section of our phone. So let’s roll towards the settings of our iPhone or the iPad.

You can find the settings icon on your home screen, if not on the first page, try scrolling/swiping left and right to find it on other pages. Once located, tap on it to open the settings menu of your iPhone/iPad.

Once we have opened the settings, we can move on to our next step, that is, open the Do Not Disturb tab, which is located usually in the second section from of the settings.

Once located the Do Not Disturb tab, tap on it to open further DND settings to enable it.

On top of the Do Not Disturb tab settings, there will be a “manual” button to turn DND on or off.

Turning it right will make it highlight in green, which means your DND is turned on. You will also notice a moon icon on your notification bar which is the sign of Do Not Disturb.

Now there is one more way to quickly turn on DND from your home screen of the iPhone or iPad, let us find out how.

• Using the control center

Control center can be helpful for many features and accessibility, one such feature included is our required DND option. So how do we use, or how do we turn on DND from the control center?

To open the control center, swipe down from the top right corner of your screen or the iPhone or iPad. It would appear to be something like this –

Now in the control center, you can simply tap on the crescent moon icon as shown in the picture above, and voila! Your Do Not Disturb mode is on.

You can also touch and hold the moon icon to directly go to the “Do Not Disturb”.

Now that we know how to turn on Do Not Disturb, there is still a question for what if there is some emergency call coming during the DND hours? For example, from your boss/employer themself, or your children,or parents, anyone that can be more important to answer?

3. Bypass the DND

Well, there is also a bypass option in the DND settings that can allow calls from one/multiple selective contacts that you choose. How do we do that?

To allow contacts through the DND firewall we are going to use the “allow calls from” option in the ‘phone’ tab of the DND settings of the iPhone.

You can choose to allow no one to bypass the DND, or one specific contact, or a group of contacts through this option.

Now that we can pretty much manage all our DND notifications, let us move on to the last feature of the DND which can prove to be very useful for us.

4. Schedule the DND

We often have our work/school hours fixed, like school from morning 8 to afternoon 2. Or work hours from 9 am to 5 pm. And suppose in these hours we need our DND enabled without failure. Or it could even be the late-night sleeping hours when you come home all tired from the day’s hard work.

Well, the scheduling option of DND can help us do that with ease.

Using the “scheduled” option in our Do Not Disturb settings section, we can choose the hours when our DND starts and ends on its own.

Frequently Answered Questions

1. What if there is an emergency where someone from outside our “allowed” list of DND bypass calls?

The Do Not Disturb section of the iPhone and iPad also provides this feature where if someone calls you two times within three minutes, it will ring the second time that person calls, bypassing the DND. And of course, you can choose to disable this feature.

2. Why do I receive notifications when my phone is on during DND?

There is an options tab “silence” which allows you to enable the Do Not Disturb during either all times or just when your phone is locked.

3. Will I receive facetime calls during DND?

No, facetime calls also count as notifications and when DND is enabled, they will be filtered from appearing too.

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Conclusion

In the end, the Do Not Disturb feature of iPhones and iPads has a very effective way of handling our “quiet hours” and that we learned nicely with our detailed and easy to go guide today.