By Jason Snell

January 17, 2024 8:45 AM PT

How I automate Focus Modes to keep distractions to a minimum

I’ve learned in recent years that I’ve become something of a minimalist. I like keeping things simple, preferring glanceable information to alerts that get in my face whether I want them or not. I’ve reduced the number of apps that have permission to bug me, and more recently, I’ve embraced Apple’s Focus Modes to silence the noise.

There were several situations in which I found myself often being bugged, mostly on my Apple Watch, when I didn’t want to be, including when I was working (writing or podcasting), working out, playing a sport, or showering.

I don’t blame the apps that bug me when I’m doing something else—in large part, I’ve asked them to do it. (And as for the ones I haven’t, they will be silenced immediately as punishment!)

As for friends and colleagues who text me, I don’t blame them, either—they’re treating the text message as the asynchronous medium it’s meant to be. But having a text message sitting out there, unanswered, drives me batty—I’ll want to answer it. What’s worse, if I do answer it—usually with a canned reply from my Apple Watch—that reply often serves as a sign that I’m ready to engage in a larger conversation when I’m not. But I’m the cause of the problem, not them, and I need to deal with it.

I’ve addressed these issues using a few different approaches.

I’ve got a bunch of Stream Deck buttons that I press to start a podcast recording session, all of which run some sort of shortcut. I’ve added an additional couple of steps to all of them: when the session starts, I enter a Recording Focus Mode. And when the session ends, I turn that Focus off.

For writing, it’s trickier. I use different apps to write, and I use those apps in other contexts, so I’m largely triggering my Writing mode manually at this point. When I need to stick in my headphones and concentrate on writing, I will generally remember to click that box. I’d love to figure out some other way to automate this, but it may not be possible.

To avoid typing entire conversations by swiping fingers on an Apple Watch while trying to run—it’s absurd, and I’m sure I look absurd when I’m doing it—I use an Apple-built feature. On the Apple Watch, open the Settings app, tap Focus, then tap Fitness.

You’ll see an option to Turn on automatically when starting a workout. Flip this switch on, and you’ll be in a Fitness mode when you’re exercising. When the workout ends, the Focus Mode turns itself off!

You might think I don’t need to turn off notifications when I’m in the shower because how could they possibly affect me in there? But here’s the thing: First, some notifications have the strange effect of dipping the sound playing from my podcast player—as if they’re going to make a noise, but they’re silenced, so they don’t! But the dipping still happens. It’s very distracting.

Also, I leave my iPhone just outside the shower in case I need to skip to a different podcast mid-shower, or back up, or whatever. My shower is transparent glass. When a notification comes in, I can see my phone light up. It doesn’t matter that I shouldn’t notice—I do, and it drives me batty. I suppose I should put it face down, but that doesn’t address the dipping audio issue.

It doesn’t matter, though, because I’m using two triggers in iOS 17 to run shortcuts that solve the whole problem. One of the most underrated features of the Shortcuts app on the iPhone is Personal Automations, which are triggered when the iPhone experiences some specific conditions. As of iOS 17, you can trigger a shortcut when your phone connects or disconnects from a specific Bluetooth device.

So I built a simple shortcut called “DND Toggle” that gets the current Focus status, and if there isn’t one, turns on Do Not Disturb. If there is one, it turns off that Focus Mode. Then, I specified that the shortcut should run every time my iPhone connects to my Bluetooth shower speaker. That’s it! Now, when I turn on the speaker, the automation runs, and my iPhone enters Do Not Disturb mode—which it remains in until I turn the speaker back off.

To address getting bugged while curling, I’m using a different Focus feature. I created a new mode called Curling (it’s got a snowflake icon, how cute!) and scrolled down in the settings for this mode to the Set a Schedule setting. Now, when I pull into the parking lot at the curling club, my phone enters Curling Mode. There’s a custom curling-themed wallpaper (for fun!), but more importantly, my notifications are silenced. When I leave the club, the mode ends. (In reality, it ends when I finish curling, assuming I’ve set a curling workout on my Apple Watch. As detailed above, the act of starting that workout means I’ll be placed in Fitness mode, and when I’ve finished, it’ll take me out of all Focus Modes.)

Now, as I write this, I’m realizing that maybe I could do with fewer Focus Modes since all of my modes are trying to do the same thing and have most of the same settings: let messages from my immediate family through, but nothing else. Maybe simplifying my Focus Modes will be a future project. But for now, I’ve got what I want: I don’t see interrupting messages until I’m done doing what I’m doing. It’s better this way. I recommend it!

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