The Focus characteristic Apple launched on this fall’s working system updates to embody Do Not Disturb and Driving modes has its detractors, like Macworld’s Jason Cross, who argues it requires an excessive amount of effort to handle. (Learn his critique at “Apple’s Focus mode is just too difficult. Right here’s how one can make it higher.”)

A working example—and how one can resolve it—occurred throughout my units not too long ago when folks texting me utilizing iMessage obtained the alert, “Glenn has notifications silenced.” However I didn’t? Or no less than I assumed so.

The issue was a mixture of things, together with that I’m not but working macOS 12 Monterey on my major Mac, an M1 Mac mini, which is working the most recent model of macOS 11 Large Sur. I’ve iOS 15 put in on my iPhone, iPadOS 15 on my iPad mini, and macOS 12 on an M1 MacBook Air. Large Sur solely reveals Do Not Disturb within the Management Middle and different places.

On my iPhone, the place somebody informed me I had notifications silenced, I checked:

• Do Not Disturb and different Focus modes had been all disabled.
• In Settings > Focus, Share Throughout Units was disabled.
• On my Large Sur Mac, Do Not Disturb was disabled.

Then I remembered: the day gone by, I had turned on Do Not Disturb in Focus whereas utilizing AirPlay for my household to observe a TV present from my MacBook Air. I had by no means gone again and disabled Do Not Disturb.

Certain sufficient, after I checked that Mac with Monterey put in, within the Notification & Focus desire pane’s Focus tab, the Share Focus Standing checkbox was chosen—I didn’t recall choosing it, however there you go.

Though my iPhone didn’t have Share Throughout Units enabled, the truth that one system logged into iCloud with the identical account did imply that each one different units shared the Focus setting.

That’s proper: the Share Throughout Units/Share Focus Standing settings is…not shared throughout units.

Disabling Share Focus Standing and turning off Do Not Disturb in Focus solved the issue.

Because of a number of of us on Twitter who helped debug this interplay, together with  and .

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