Focus Mode frustrations across devices

[tomacwhite]

I absolutely LOVE Focus mode on my iPhone. It blocks work Slack out of hours, switches my Watch screen to the big Activity rings when I am in the gym building and using Activies, and dims the screen when it's nearly bedtime. It's great! However...

I don't want it on my MacBook! My Mac is purely for personal use, yet if I use it at lunch time etc it will silence notifications that I have silenced on my phone like Discord - I don't want it to do that.

I turned off the 'Sharing over devices', and that doesn't work as the Focus modes still do their thing. So I deleted them off my Mac (with sharing off), and the next day my iPhone and Watch had all its Focus modes deleted, which is pretty annoying as I had to set them all up again.

There should be a simple setting of specifically tagging which devices you do or don't want included in Focus Modes. Unless of course there is, and I've missed it (again, turning off Sharing doesn't work).

 

[adrianlondon]

Mine works as expected.

On my Mac, I toggle the "share across devices" to OFF, and then when I switch Focus modes on my phone, nothing happens on my laptop. As soon as I toggle it to ON, they start to synchronise again. Works perfectly.

iPhone 11: iOS 17.5.1
Intel MBA: MacOS 14.5

 

[tomacwhite]

That's weird :/ I'll take another look at my settings

 

[tomacwhite]

Hold on though; you can't change them on the Mac? There's no way of turning them on or off. Mine is locked to ON for my current Focus and cannot be adjusted?

 

[adrianlondon]

Hold on though; you can't change them on the Mac? There's no way of turning them on or off. Mine is locked to ON for my current Focus and cannot be adjusted?

Yep, MacOS settings - I've not checked individual Focus modes, but this settings stops any of them syncing across.

Settings / Focus / (list of focus modes at the top, underneath which is ...) Share across devices

 

[NoBoMac]

Not at my Mac right now, so can’t check how things are there for me, but what might help is to turn off sharing and then create new Focuses for the phone.

Basically same what happened to me in the early days of Focuses. Sharing never really worked then, would have device Focuses turn off when others stayed on (eg. iPad went off, iPhone stayed on). And similarly, did not want on Mac. So turned off sharing and re-did the Foci on phone to better fit with how I wanted to go forward there. So had new names for Focuses on phone, iPad and Mac have different set of names/Foci. iPad has its own schedules (basically just bedtime Focus as no real need to quiet that vs phone that’s pretty much always around and in different places), Mac none, and phone’s changing of Focuses does not affect other devices.

 

[tomacwhite]

Thanks, I'll try this out now.

 

[tomacwhite]

It's a little more complex as I want it to copy across between iPhone and Watch, but not Mac. I will try naming them different..

 

[NoBoMac]

I'd create new as existing Foci will retain their original UID value even when renamed, and that is how it's recognized across the Apple environment.

In the case of Watch, easy, just have Mirror iPhone on in Watch app. Will be "shared" with Watch.

 

[NoBoMac]

Hold on though; you can't change them on the Mac? There's no way of turning them on or off. Mine is locked to ON for my current Focus and cannot be adjusted?

Should be able to change and turn on/off. At least showing so on my Mac.

And have "Share across devices" there if you go to Settings (or click Focus Settings...)