Hands-On Apple 226 transcript

Please be advised that this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word-for-word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-free version of the show.

Mikah Sargent [00:00:00]:
Here's something that might sound familiar. You're trying to get work done and your phone lights up with a fantasy football update or a group chat about your weekend plans. And then also lights up about a promotional email from a store that you bought something from once in 2019. None of it is urgent. All of it broke your concentration. Do not disturb would certainly come in handy here. It would silence everything, but. Well, then you'd miss the slack message from your boss or the text from your kid's school.

Mikah Sargent [00:00:28]:
Focus modes are Apple's answer to that. In between silencing the stuff that doesn't matter right now while letting the stuff that does still get through. And they're way more flexible than most people realize. Stay tuned for this episode of Hands on Apple podcasts you love from people you trust. This is Twit. Hello and welcome to Hands on Apple. I am Micah Sargent and today we are kicking off a three parter all about focus modes. And it starts with the basics.

Mikah Sargent [00:01:12]:
What is a focus and how is it different from. Well, that basic do not disturb that you're used to. A focus is a set of rules, okay, that your device follows about who can reach you and what apps and services are able to interrupt you. You can think of it like do not disturb, but it's do not disturb disturb. With a few more filters in place instead of one blunt on off switch, you can have multiple configurations for different parts of your life. When a focus is active, notifications that don't match your rules will get silenced and collected into a summary. Don't worry, they're not gone. They're just waiting for you when you're ready.

Mikah Sargent [00:01:50]:
So what is the difference here between that and do not disturb? I mean, we talked of course about the sort of all on all off approach. Do not disturb is still there. What's funny is it actually gets grouped into your built in focus modes, but the old behavior was binary. Everything gets through or nothing gets through. You could set some exceptions for favorites and repeated calls. Focus modes lets you decide per focus, which people, which apps, which types of notifications are allowed. Your work focus can let Slack and your manager through while silencing everything else. Your personal focus can do the opposite.

Mikah Sargent [00:02:30]:
So let's dig in here with the built in presets. See Apple. In fact, let's head over to iOS and take a look. We'll go into settings, we will go into focus, scrolling down until we get to focus. So Apple includes several presets out of the box. You've got do not disturb. You've got sleep, you've got personal. You've got work, you've got driving.

Mikah Sargent [00:02:55]:
You can also set up fitness gaming. You can set up mindfulness, you can set up reading. It also depends on what apps you're using, but you don't have to use any of them. You can modify them, you can delete the ones you don't want. You can ignore them entirely, build your own from scratch. They're starting points, okay? These are jumping off points, the way that you kind of get going, and none of them are required. In fact, you can see I don't have personal on here. I got rid of personal.

Mikah Sargent [00:03:21]:
You can also create a fully custom focus with its own name, with its own icon. And we're actually going to do that later in the episode. Episode. So let's dig into how we actually go about turning on a focus mode before we dig into building custom focus modes. It's a lot more complicated. So let's walk through how to activate a Focus so that you can understand how it works. Well, firstly, you can manually activate a focus mode on iPhone. If you swipe down to Open Control center, you can tap the focus button.

Mikah Sargent [00:03:52]:
So I'll swipe down here. Now I'm in Control center here on the side, I can see that focus button. If I tap and hold on it, I'm given the option to choose between all of my focus modes. If you just tap on it, then the focus button will turn on whatever focus is there by default. So here, Do Not Disturb gets turned on. And that of course works the same on your iPad. On the Mac, you would click the Control center icon in the menu bar or access your Control center however you choose to and then toggle on the focus from there. Now, when I turn on the Do Not Disturb focus mode, it just turns it on, right? But you can also tap on my favorite thing, the three dots, and choose to turn it on for an hour.

Mikah Sargent [00:04:36]:
Choose to turn it on until this evening, choose to turn it on until you leave a specific location, or choose to turn it on until the end of an event, that event is pulled from your calendar. The location is obviously pulled from the location that you're currently at. This is very helpful for me. When I go to the theater and I want to turn on Do Not Disturb while I'm at the theater. I turn that on and it asks me, hey, how long do you want this on? I say, oh, until I leave this location. Very nice to be able to say, okay, I'm good for now. But as soon as you detect that I'M gone. I would like this to turn off.

Mikah Sargent [00:05:10]:
Now. Inside any focus, you can actually set a time based schedule. So let's try the work focus. Here you can see some different options. And the first thing is the work focus is set up. And if we scroll down, we've got the opt option to set a schedule. It is the option to be able to make a decision on how the schedule is set up. So if you've got a, you know, typical 9 to 5, then you would be able to turn that on there.

Mikah Sargent [00:05:39]:
Let's, let's try it out. We'll tap add schedule and we will set it based on time and we'll do nine to five. And let's say we work a Monday through Friday job. Hey, you're lucky if I tap to toggle off Sunday and Saturday and make sure that the times are set nine to five. I hit that checkbox. Now every weekday from nine to five, my work focus mode turns on automatically. And the cool thing is you can actually set multiple schedules. Okay, so if you normally want it to be 9 to 5 during weekdays, maybe on your Sunday, for example, that's when you pray when you plan your week.

Mikah Sargent [00:06:21]:
And so you do that let's from 7pm to 8pm okay. And that's just your little planning schedule. So every Sunday it turns on briefly during that time so that you're able to kind of plan how you want to. Now we're going to delete this schedule by tapping into the schedule and choosing Delete schedule and we're going to tap add schedule one more time. There's actually a feature called Smart Activation. What it does is it lets the system decide when to turn on a focus mode. And it does that based on your signals that you're sending to the phone. And by that I mean the time of day, the location, the apps that you use.

Mikah Sargent [00:07:05]:
It looks at your patterns over time, it looks at your calendar, it looks at all the stuff and then tries to get smart about when it should be turned on. Personally not big on this feature because it is hit or miss. When I turn this on. Sometimes it automatically will turn on the focus mode, knowing that I've got an event. But there are times where it's on and I go, you shouldn't be on right now. And so I don't personally like to use Smart activation. However, I've talked to people for whom it works and in that case, there you go. So give it a shot, see if it works for you.

Mikah Sargent [00:07:39]:
There's also one of my favorite things, which is location Based activation. So you could set it that when you arrive at a specific location, maybe you've got a fitness schedule or Fitness Focus. You can easily tie it so that when you arrive at your gym, this location automatically turns on that Fitness Focus mode. And then you can also trigger it when you open a specific app. This is especially helpful if you've got, say, the Kindle app on your phone or if you've got games that you like to play that you don't want to be interrupted during. You can say, hey, when I open the Kindle app, or when I open this specific game, don't let these people talk to me, or do let these people talk to me. You know, if you've got your book Talk friend, for example. So that's how you tie your Focus mode to a schedule, but also how you can simply toggle on a Focus mode by tapping in Control Center.

Mikah Sargent [00:08:38]:
Now, we're going to take a quick break, but when we come back, we're going to talk about choosing who and what gets through. All right, let's head back to the show and continue with our click coverage of Focus modes. So back in iOS, it's time to talk about who and what is going to get through when it comes to a Focus mode. So we've set a schedule. We've said, you know, I want my work Focus mode to activate at this specific time. Now we need to decide what's allowed to interrupt you. So let's take a look again at the Work mode. And here we've got the Allow notifications section.

Mikah Sargent [00:09:16]:
This is how you can choose specific contacts and specific apps that are allowed to send you notifications. Now, under people, you'll notice that I have Rosemary Orchard. That is because for my work, oftentimes when I'm doing iOS today with Rosemary, hosting iOS today with Rosemary, I need to get messages from her. You can choose to add people. And the cool thing is you can toggle between these lists so you can say, I don't want notifications from this person, or I do, or excuse me, these people, or I do want notifications. So it is either a block or allow list, depending on how you want to set it up. You can then add people by hitting that add people button. I'm not going to do that.

Mikah Sargent [00:09:56]:
It'll pop open my contacts, but you get the idea. And then there's also an option that says for phone calls, allow calls from and whom. That means that in my work Focus mode, if someone calls me, it is allowed through, but you can also say instead of everybody allowed People only. So that would be the people that you put into that notifications area. You can set it to your favorites. You can set it so that it's only people who are your contacts, or you can choose a group that you have set up as well. So I might set it so that only contacts are allowed to call me while I work. Focus mode is turned on and then there's the option that says if a person calls a second time within three minutes, then go ahead and let that call through.

Mikah Sargent [00:10:42]:
The idea is that if somebody's calling you with something very urgent, they're likely to call you again. And so it will allow that to break through. Now, again, this is a choice. Is it a block list? Is it an allow list? You get to choose which one you want. The same idea applies when we go to apps. These are the apps that are allowed to break through that I've set up during my work. Focus mode turned on. You can also choose to silence notifications instead of allow.

Mikah Sargent [00:11:13]:
And then there's an option that says time sensitive notifications. So even if an app is not in this list, if it does have the ability to send you time sensitive notifications, which is a special toggle, it's a special feature that some apps have, then they are able to send those through. You know, there are some apps that are going to abuse that time sensitive flag. And if that's the case, you would want to go into that specific app and say you don't get to send me notifications. But most of the time those time sensitive notifications are important. And in many cases, like in my case, I have certain apps set up to be able to do so. So that is the Allow Notifications section. You're also able to set up some other stuff.

Mikah Sargent [00:11:58]:
And the way that we're going to look at that is by building a Focus from scratch. So let's walk through this process. Let's say, what do we want to do here? You want a. We'll call it Heads down, right? It's a Focus mode that says, look, my head is down. I'm doing deep work right now. I'm studying, I'm writing. You want a Heads down Focus mode? We have gone into the Settings app. We've tapped on Focus.

Mikah Sargent [00:12:24]:
We're going to hit the plus icon in the top right corner. That's going to allow us to create a custom focus mode. We'll call it Heads Down. We'll pick a color. I think deep work is in my mind, purple. And the icon we're going to use is we Will use the briefcase. No, we will use the fire icon. My head is down.

Mikah Sargent [00:12:58]:
I'm focused. Now we choose to customize it in this maybe you want to make sure that there are only a few apps and people who can get through. I'm going to switch away from this temporarily so I can choose to allow oh, and in fact this is good. I can show you this screen. In this case, perhaps there are people. And again this is all set up based on my behaviors. It goes oh, two people that you talk to regularly are your partner and your co host for clockwise. Perhaps you would want to allow notifications from these people.

Mikah Sargent [00:13:36]:
Indeed I would. It also says if you would like to allow calls from certain people, I will choose allowed people only so even my favorites can't get through. And then I'm going to choose apps. Once again it has suggestions for what apps I might want through. When it comes to the to this focus, I want everything except for my do app to not be able to send me notifications. I also I'm going to go back into people and I'm going to make sure that allowed people only are set. I'm actually going to turn off allow repeated calls. I'm going to go into apps and make sure that I have time sensitive notifications toggled off.

Mikah Sargent [00:14:20]:
I don't want any of that. Okay. And then I have an option to choose option and what this does is it lets notifications either pull up on the lock screen or not. It's currently turned off. You can choose to hide notification badges so those red circles are off and then whether these notifications are silenced depending on why, when the phone is locked or not and if the lock screen gets dimmed when this note when this focus mode is turned on, that's important. If you are trying to do sort of a nighttime focus mode. From there we can go through and set up a schedule or a trigger. So let's go down to set a schedule and we can choose to not use Smart activation but instead we will say that let's tie it to an app.

Mikah Sargent [00:15:21]:
Okay. And we're going to say that when I open the IA Writer app, which is my markdown editor of choice, then go ahead and turn on this focus mode. Otherwise I will just do it myself. So let's go ahead and see what this looks like in practice if we have this focus mode turned on. So I will quickly head over to let me find the IA Writer app and pull that up. No spoilers. Don't want you to see what we're working on soon all right, so with this focus mode turned on now, if someone were to message me or if an app were to try to get in touch, it could not do so. They'll show up in my notification summary, but they are not popping up and bothering me while I have this enabled and I can tap on or I can swipe down to Access Control center and turn off that focus mode.

Mikah Sargent [00:16:21]:
And in fact, if I go out of the app and go somewhere else, you'll notice that it also turns off as well. Now, there's a lot more to focus modes. Okay, as you'll note, when we were going through, I didn't talk about intelligent breakthrough and silencing, I didn't talk about customized screens, and I didn't talk about focus filters. That's going to come up in a future episode. We're just getting the hang of focus modes right now before we dig into the more complex stuff. So I've got some homework for you before your next episode. You're going to set up one focus. Either customize a built in preset or create one from scratch like we just did.

Mikah Sargent [00:17:00]:
That's what I'd like for you to do. I'd also like you. This is the important part. Live with it for at least a few days, right? Tweak that allowed people, tweak the allowed apps until you get exactly what you want. Dial it in right? And you figure out what you do and don't want. And then please try at least one automation trigger. It can be a schedule, it can be a location, it can be an app based trigger. You can use the Smart Activation if you feel like you can trust that.

Mikah Sargent [00:17:26]:
See how it feels to have it activate without you having to think about it. So again, set up one focus, give it a go for a few days before you give up on it, and then try at least one automation trigger. That's your homework before our next episode where we'll continue on with Focus mode. You've gotten the foundation now. You now know what focus modes are, you know how to activate them, you know how to control who and what can interrupt you. But honestly, this only just scratches the surface. Next episode we're getting into focus filters and lock screen pairing. That is where the feature goes from the fancy version of Do Not Disturb to an actual a full context switch that can change how your entire device looks and behaves and therefore maybe also has a psychological effect on helping you to shift focus.

Mikah Sargent [00:18:14]:
Very exciting stuff. All of that coming up on the next episode of Hands on Apple. If you have questions for me if you want to tell me about the focus modes you tried that you worked on. If there's something that you are still wondering about, let me me know Micah at TWiT TV. So that way I can make sure it gets covered in one of the upcoming episodes. Thank you so much. I'll see you next time. Bye.

Mikah Sargent [00:18:34]:
Bye.