Best way to automatically silence notifications at a specific time frame while already in Focus
Best way to automatically silence notifications at a specific time frame while already in Focus
This needs to be explained a bit, so here's my problem:
- I use Focus for sleeping. I manually enable it when I go to bed and disable it when I wake up.
- My Focus setting disables notifications for email, calendar, and some messaging apps.
- My security camera app notifications are not disabled, obviously because I want to be alerted if something triggers it in the middle of the night.
- However, there is a certain time in the morning between 7:30AM and 8AM where people walking on the sidewalk triggers alerts that wake me up. And no, I want to avoid not pointing my cameras away from that part of the sidewalk because it helps me catch people letting their pets pee and poop on my yard.
- I usually wake up at 8AM and getting woken up 30 minutes earlier is annoying.
- I am willing to accept the risk of not getting notifications from my cameras on my phone for 30 minutes before I wake up.
What is the most practical way to disable notifications from an app on a scheduled time duration while Focus is already in use? Schedule it in Health? Create a shortcut/automation?
Just create a second focus that’s on a schedule for that time window and disables notifications for the camera app.
This sounds like a winner to me
I'm honestly not clear on why this isn't working. Can you share some screenshots, and/or go into more detail of your setup?
Is this a HomeKit camera or are you using third party software? HomeKit allows for defining zones for activity detection (so you could exclude an area) and only sending activity during certain times. If you don’t use HomeKit, maybe your camera software has a similar setting.
It’s a 3rd party app. It does allow me to set activity zones, but as mentioned, I actually want to monitor that area. I just don’t want it to alert me for a specific 30 minute period in the morning. But yeah, I’ll see if I can customize the schedule of that specific camera on the app to stop alerts only for that specific time. Thanks!
I don't believe a shortcut will let you disable/silence these notifications through settings, at least I found nothing to do this. Unless your security camera app has shortcut integration to do this. You could use a shortcut to cut your phones internet, although that would also stop other (emergency) notifications from reaching you, so likely not what you're looking for.
You could add a "quiet sleep" focus and either use a shortcut (kind of like 'run at 7:30, if focus is sleep, set focus to quiet sleep') or just directly schedule it for 7:30 with the focus schedule. This might mean that your health app thinks you always wake up at 7:30 (not entirely sure if that is how it works), but when disabling the "quiet sleep" focus, you could then just log another health sample through shortcuts (as in 'run if quiet sleep turned off, log health sample asleep from 7:30 to now') and you'd get the same data.
I have had a lot of focuses, some that do almost the same thing but had to be split into different names just to make some scripting work. Splitting your sleep phases might be an option for you too.
Setting multiple focuses sounds like a simple way to do it. I’ll have to script only the 30 minute period because I can’t automate the Sleep focus due to going to bed at different times in the evening (so I want to keep it manual). Thanks!
I'm glad that suggestion would work for you! Yes, you'd only need to script the transition from sleep to quiet sleep at 7:30, that should do the trick. Maybe you'd want to switch the to focuses, as in having a 'light sleep' where you get notified by your cameras, and the switching to the normal 'sleep' focus at 7:30, because usually when I turn off the sleep focus, I have a weather forecast on the lockscreen, and this might not work if you turn off the 'deep sleep' focus instead. But you'll figure something out! :)