I’m glad to hear from someone who likes it. I thought I was going to be in exactly the camp you describe—enjoying the power user features because I can keep all this stuff straight. Normally, I love options and being able to customize things just so.
But my experiences showed that even I couldn’t do it reliably, and Tonya was having the same problem. Then trying to help friends and relatives showed that people were getting caught in the weeds with the feature even when they didn’t need it. And those banners!
Nevertheless, I am happy to hear it’s working as designed for you.
The “focus” I wanted is not easy to achieve. I use one phone for both work and personal stuff. I’d love to simply create a “Focus” that turns off my work-related app notifications (Mail on my work account, Teams, and maybe one or two other things). As it appears to be Opt-in, I’d have to spend hours “opting in” to every other App that I DO want to use. Either that, or I’m missing something, which just goes to support the over-complication nature of Focus. Oh - and it is a slightly different set of apps on my iPad vs. my Phone.
glad to read this and all the comments. I’m amazed and annoyed by the feature set for reasons mentioned in OP and above. I just had to try it, but it tripped me up and wasted way more time than it has saved me.
I don’t need to know that my iPhone is unlocking my Apple Watch—that becomes obvious because it is unlocked afterward.
Just want to say this is an important alert. If you have both devices, these cross-device unlocks will always feel necessary. The whole point is to alert you for the case when the device being unlocked is not with you. In that case, it indicates a possible security breach, and you definitely want to be notified.
I’m really surprised that no one has mentioned that you can focus for either one hour or until evening (defined as?). I frequently have a gap in my day where I want to work on a project—for 15 minutes or 30 minutes or 90 minutes, and I want to focus for that period. Aside from the issues you’ve pointed to, Adam, what about being able to set the period of the focus? THAT seems like a glaring omission! It makes it damn near useless for me.
I think my biggest issue with Focus was going from having a setup that wasn’t ideal, but was basically pretty simple, to something byzantine and more complex that I now have to set up to use. The prompts asking if I want to keep receiving certain notifications usually appear when I am personally “focused” on something else. I feel like this is something I have to devote a couple of hours on in order to get it configured properly.
The part that really threw me was enabling “Work” Focus without fully checking the options. I soon found out it was screening most of my calls!
I’ve always been an early adopter and a fast learner, and my inability completely grasp the workings of Focus are to me either a sign of bad design or my advancing age.
I thought that moving the address bar to the bottom of the screen was one of the stupidest “improvements” Apple ever made. Focus, and just about everything associated with it, knocked it out of the ballpark.
Fortunately, you can put that one back. Go to the Safari settings and scroll down to the “Tabs” section. Request single-tab operation instead of the tab bar:
I haven’t read Adam’s article yet, but had to comment anyway… I am beginning to suspect that Focus is a torture technique designed by some vicious, mad coder working out his anger toward the world. Focus drives me nuts. I am constantly trying to modify it so it “works” for me instead of against me. I am totally failing at managing it. I can’t figure it out. For example, I constantly find that I"m missing text messages because I don’t get any sound alerts for texts on my phone… while my watch buzzes and my iPad "dings’. It’s driving me insane.
I suggest that everyone who is struggling with Focus like I am send feedback to Apple via their Product Feedback page: Product Feedback - Apple
Same here, Adam. My wife and I are well down the path to insanity around dealing the the downside issues from Focus. She is vere analytical about things like this. However, every time we have sat down, compared settings on our iPhones, try multiple tests with different settings, etc. we come away worn out and totally frustrated and baffled. I cannot recall some so confusing coming from Apple in my entire 42 years of using Apple gear.
For example, I constantly find that I"m missing text messages because I don’t get any sound alerts for texts on my phone… while my watch buzzes and my iPad "dings’.
That’s the way it always works with the watch (and always has). Only your watch or your phone will sound or buzz a notification by default - your phone if the display is on and unlocked, the watch otherwise. It has nothing to do with DND/Focus.
I think there is something up with text messages. Yesterday I am sitting at my desk texting someone from my computer with the phone right next to me. The last text took 8 minutes to come through on the phone and even longer on the computer. Sometimes they will only show up on one device. Since getting the new phone in September, I’ve missed a lot of text notifications.
Sometimes I think if the phone is right side up and can “see” me, it doesn’t make a sound.
However, I just may figure out how to delete that Focus still to confirm, because I had tried to set it up initially.
I’ve had the same issue @dianed143! I posted to SlackBits about this. I find there’s a considerable lag between when messages or notifications appear on different devices. I may be proven wrong, but I swear that it used to be possible to dismiss notifications on all my devices by reading them or acknowledging them on one of the devices. Now I have to look at the notifications on each device to dismiss notifications or badges.
If by “YOU PEOPLE” you’re referring to Apple, I wholeheartedly agree.
They seem way too agressively chatty in iOS15, everytime I go to pick up a message, am running to a bus stop, trying to answer a phone call etc., one of their bloody notifications pop up (often requiring that I make a choice about enabling one feature or another)
While I assume/hope that this is a one time only annoyance while opening an app for first time in iOS15, surely there’s a better way to handle this.
