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Dont Disturb

A

AntonisCy

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Dec 5, 2010
340
101
Can someone please explain what the advantages of this feature is compared to putting the phone on airplane mode or silencing it.

I guess the advantage over airplane mode is that you still get notifications missed calls and messages, but you can get those immediately after disabling airplane mode.

What about advantages over silent mode? you just dim the screen light?

Just picture a scenario where the phone in on the desk and you have no access to it or can see it for a night.

What are the advantages?
 
You can set Do Not Disturb to let some notifications through. SO, for example, I can ask it to not disturb me unless my wife calls, in which case I want to be notified.
 
A lot of people, like me, sleep with the phone right next to their beds. I use mine as an alarm clock as well. Having it light up at all could be distracting to some, even when dim for those light sleepers. Also, silent mode can interfere with certain apps, like an alarm clock app if you are not using the built-in one (I don't, I hate it).

Having your phone on Airplane mode does have a flaw when you turn the mode back off. You won't get notified of missed calls, only the voicemails associated with them if the person left one. And, your phone will be temporarily bogged down as message after message and VM after VM come streaming in and your phone will be going off with notification alerts for the next 20-30 minutes. That can get annoying.


Look at Do Not Disturb as a more customizable version of silent mode, allowing very important people of your choosing to get thru in the event of an emergency, like your son or daughter out with friends that night. And it has that feature, when enabled, that if the person calling you tries calling back within 3 minutes, it'll go thru like normal. It just gives you more options to help you get some sleep, yet get notified when it matters.
 
Sylon said:
A lot of people, like me, sleep with the phone right next to their beds. I use mine as an alarm clock as well. Having it light up at all could be distracting to some, even when dim for those light sleepers. Also, silent mode can interfere with certain apps, like an alarm clock app if you are not using the built-in one (I don't, I hate it).
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I use mine this way as well and can see the above being helpful. However, I don't have an issue with alerts, SMS or calls coming in during the middle of the night. I also insure my alarms or notifications in Outlook aren't set to ding during that time.

Having your phone on Airplane mode does have a flaw when you turn the mode back off. You won't get notified of missed calls, only the voicemails associated with them if the person left one.
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IMO if I miss a call and there's no voice mail, it wasn't an urgent call thus I never worry about it. If it's not important enough for me to have a message then I see no need to see if it was just missed. Especially during a time where I was busy enough to block out other things.

And, your phone will be temporarily bogged down as message after message and VM after VM come streaming in and your phone will be going off with notification alerts for the next 20-30 minutes. That can get annoying.
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Is that really likely? I mean, if you're getting VM after VM streaming in simply from not being available for a certain period of time, then there are other issues in that work/personal life that need addressed. I guess I just don't see that. During a busy afternoon of meetings I might get 2-3 maybe even four missed calls but during the day at meetings I will just put the phone in silent mode. At night, I can't see the above being applicable.

Look at Do Not Disturb as a more customizable version of silent mode, allowing very important people of your choosing to get thru in the event of an emergency, like your son or daughter out with friends that night.
Click to expand...

Again, I can see this example but then as noted above, I think it's subset of users that folks are likely getting woken up at night by their phone. Useful feature to them I suppose.

And it has that feature, when enabled, that if the person calling you tries calling back within 3 minutes, it'll go thru like normal. It just gives you more options to help you get some sleep, yet get notified when it matters.
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at first it sounds like a good feature, but in my case it would be annoying. When away from my office I push call forward on my land line so it hits my cell. Often times people will try me there first then at my cell number in which case, I wouldn't want a repeat call within 3 minutes coming through.

Not knocking the feature completely. I like their interest in giving folks more options for things like this. Just seems to be a feature at a more targeted subset of users. Or maybe I'm the odd one out. :D
 
My iPhone is right next to me as I sleep. It'll be nice to schedule DND mode and not worry about my phone ringing, or vibrating, or lighting up during the night...which happens all the time to me. I'm currently silencing my phone and laying it on its face to avoid at.

Phone calls arent as big an issue and I'd rather be able to get calls as if someone's calling me at 3am its probably an emergency of some sort. So I'll probably allow calls to come through...
 
So far I kinda like DND, I do wish however that it worked for calls AND SMS Alerts. Being in IT and always on call, all of our systems notify us via some kind of SMS. I added these extensions to my favorites list but it still doesnt alert on them.
 
I sleep with the phone right next to me and I have been using this feature for a few days now. It works great so far!

I really like that it allows me to have certain people be able to get through if it were an emergency but blocks everything else.
 
I'm still not sure if its working properly though.
Every time I go into the settings, the slider shows off.
When I turn it on it seems to work but does it really need to be turned on every time?
For me it's much less useful unless it's a set it and forget it type of thing.
Otherwise what's the point of being able to set the hours for it?
 
It seems like you can set for what time the "Do not disturb" feature is enabled.

This is cool, since it's very annoying for me when some of my friends call in the middle of the night.
 
Gjwilly said:
I'm still not sure if its working properly though.
Every time I go into the settings, the slider shows off.
When I turn it on it seems to work but does it really need to be turned on every time?
For me it's much less useful unless it's a set it and forget it type of thing.
Otherwise what's the point of being able to set the hours for it?
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There are two ways to set it. The first one is a quick toggle for anytime you want it. Say your going to a meeting in the middle of the day then you could enable it quickly through Settings-Do Not Disturb.

The second way is through Settings-Notifications-Do Not Disturb.
This is where you set a schedule. I have mine set for 10PM-5AM.
That way when I'm sleeping I won't get notifications. Once you set
this it stays set until you change it.
 
Will this feature be able to allow just certain phone numbers to ring, but send the rest straight to voicemail? Or maybe VIP? I'd LOVE that.
 
bozz2006 said:
Will this feature be able to allow just certain phone numbers to ring, but send the rest straight to voicemail? Or maybe VIP? I'd LOVE that.
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It allows you to allow your favourites to come through and ring, or if you have groups in your contacts, say "Family" you can allow everyone in that contact list to ring through. The rest will ring until VM picks up.
 
Have any of the people crapping on the feature ever actually used it? I've used it for a couple of days now and I can see several situations that will be better including:
  • when I'm traveling in Asia on a 13 hour time difference I don't want any phone calls except for my house alarm company, my wife, or select few others during the middle of the night
  • when I'm sleeping during the night in my house, same thing. I've either had to put airplane mode on or leave the phone in a different room. Yes, this does matter.
  • overnight I tend to get anywhere from 50-100 work emails. Often they take some time to load. No, it's not a big problem, but I like that it's ready when I am.
  • It could be useful for meetings for the same reasons as above but if it is truly an important meeting I turn my phone off (airplane).
The 3 minute callback feature can be disabled. "Repeated Calls" is the label.
 
MadGoat said:
It allows you to allow your favourites to come through and ring, or if you have groups in your contacts, say "Family" you can allow everyone in that contact list to ring through. The rest will ring until VM picks up.
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:D Will I have to hear the contacts not on that list at all?
 
The calls work: the ones that are not lost don't come through, but the texts don't work. Even the ones that are on the list, there still is no sound. Not sure if that's because it's beta or is that the way designed
 
bozz2006 said:
:D Will I have to hear the contacts not on that list at all?
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Nope, it's basically a "White list". For example, I have a list called "DND Allow" (for me it's cleaner than making favourites IMO). This list has my wife, my mother and my in-laws. If my best friend calls me at 3 AM, he won't even buzz my phone. But, if my mother calls(she' getting up there in years), it will ring.
 
MadGoat said:
Nope, it's basically a "White list". For example, I have a list called "DND Allow" (for me it's cleaner than making favourites IMO). This list has my wife, my mother and my in-laws. If my best friend calls me at 3 AM, he won't even buzz my phone. But, if my mother calls(she' getting up there in years), it will ring.
Click to expand...

Awesome, that's exactly what I've been waiting for.
 
I can't wait to use this feature. My white list will be all of my contacts and to hell with the telemarketers. :)

I hope I'm understanding how this is going to work because I'm going nuts with these random calls. I had to contact AT&T and disable international calling because people from Russia and Kazakhstan called me. I never answered but I don't even want to be receiving these calls. Thankfully it worked. US telemarketers are still being relentless and the Do Not Call registry seems to be a joke.
 
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Been using it for a few days as well and since most of the time I keep my phone silenced but vibrate, my phone buzzes LOUD on the iHome alarm clock dock and will wake me up throughout the night. But I have to keep it on because I have a 10 year old son who doesn't live with me, a family who travels for a living and need to be available for them. But Emails, Txts, etc etc. I don't need to. Nothing is worse then getting woken up at 4:00am for a spam email or that random txt from a drunk friend who forgets that EST and PST are 3 hours different. This way I can just set DND for 2:30am-8:00am and nothing will get through other then a few select people I have on a call list for emergencies.

Kind of blows my mind people can't get it or think it's stupid. It's a feature, if you don't need it don't use it. If you like shutting off your phone at night and don't need it on for emergencies dealing with family/children/work so be it or like toggling the vibrate on and off every night all the power to you, but to trash it as useless and stupid??? I like falling asleep to music on my phone, my alarm clock is my dock right beside my bed so for me if I can stop from Buzzzz Buzzzzz Buzzzzz off and on all night I'll gladly accept this as an awesome feature!
 
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