I’m using a only few Focus Modes, but I see inconsistent behavior when exiting a mode (as in “turn off Do Not Disturb”) and it goes back to what is basically “no mode”.
I have set things like Silent Mode on and Dark Mode on for two of the modes I use. However, often (but infuriating, not always), when coming OUT of that mode, either one or both of these settings are NOT changing back to “off”.
Am I just holding it wrong? Thanks for any ideas here!
Do you have silent / dark set to come on via automations in the Shortcuts app? If so, you can have them turn off when a focus mode is turned off by setting another automation.
Hope this is useful!
-Eric
One approach is to always be in a focus mode. For example, you could have a focus mode called “Default” or “No Focus” that configures things the way you want when you’re not focusing on a specific area of life/work.
Thanks, but no, not using Shortcuts.
Yes, I did try that on earlier versions of iOS and it gave me other issues. However, might try that again to see if things have improved. Thanks!
In general, I’d like to be able to schedule Dark Mode on/off according to sunrise/sunset, but if switching to, say “Do not Disturb” mode in a movie theatre, I’d like to override to Dark Mode even if it’s technically not yet sunset.
I think that the problem here is that changing setting by (for example) whether it is Sun rise or sun set is triggered at the time you request it via the shortcut e.g. 30 minutes before sundown. When something random happens during the day I don’t believe that there is any parameter in IOS which says whether it’s day or night so nowhere to check.
Ideally when you exit one Focus Mode it should revert to the previous, but as you’ve found sometimes it merely switches to the default focus mode (where you cannot choose which focus mode you want as the default)
I have similar issues where on a Saturday morning I wish my Focus Mode to be set to parkrun, but if I drive there and I’m driving at 8am when I’ve set the focus mode to switch, it doesn’t switch into parkrun mode and therefore when I arrive and stop driving, it’s in personal mode.
I can see that it’s not always easy picking what happens when a focus mode is exited.
I had the same discussion with Greg who writes the Drafts App (which reminds me to revisit this.) When Greg first added focus mode filtering inside the app, when you exited a focus mode, Drafts stayed with the same filters, unless you switched to a new focus mode on which you’d enacted new filters. My contention is that switching focus modes the exiting focus mode should undo it’s filtering, and the new focus mode should enact new filters if they’re required. Different people expect different behaviours,
Yes, I think I have to just accept that it works the way it works and just remember to check my settings.
Thanks!
I’ll put in another plug for the personal automations in Shortcuts that can be triggered when turning a Focus Mode on or off.
Great way to supercharge your focus modes!
-Eric