Originally published at: Use Emergency Bypass to Circumvent Do Not Disturb for VIPs - TidBITS
Want to block notifications from your iPhone at specific times but still allow important messages to break through? Learn how to use Do Not Disturb and Emergency Bypass to achieve those contradictory goals, along with what to do if you occasionally want to block even Emergency Bypass contacts.
I think once again, a lot of the complication arises because we are attempting to do so many fancy things without actually knowing if there is any broad requirement for it in the first place. Ringer switch obviously makes sense. DND possibly too, because itās essentially for the screen what the switch is for audio. Of course you could already argue against that too and tell people to simply turn off all their chatty notifications instead. And thereās Airplane Mode too. Regardless of DND, now weāre going even one step further. Now we have to introduce punch through because people are looking for a technical solution to what is ultimately a social problem (what are my priorities? and why do I hand out my number to a plethora of freaks when what I really care about is Aunt Ethel calling to tell me she can no longer breath). And as the article details, punch through now calls for another layer, new interface, etc. And already weāre talking about auto replies, etc. on top of that. That would be yet another layer. Where does this end? And how many added panels (that clutter everybodyās UI) are justified to cater to some of these rather exotic use cases?
This is all very complicated and with every step of added fancy, we need more tweaks, more options, etc. At the same time we wonder why usability and reliability have suffered. We bemoan why settings we check or change fairly often are four layers deep in Settings. We agonize that we get a plethora of bug fixes after every release because apparently the software people just canāt get their stuff to work. MS Office is a good example of what happens when you try to cater to every possible user demand. iTunes deteriorated when it went the same route.
I personally, would prefer Apple simply did away with this stuff and returned to making kit for the rest of us. Sure, the 10% of folks who use these fancy shmancy options heavily will have to turn to 3rd-party solutions (or, gasp, Android) and for them it will suck, but for the 90% others theyāll end up with a simpler phone that makes doing the stuff we do most of the time easier to handle. Steve liked to point out that better products are those with less whiz-bang. Less clutter allows for more focus on what really matters. IMHO iOS is already far too cluttered and considering obvious bugs that have plagued even the latest iOS 14 throughout countless smaller updates, obviously too complicated for even Appleās best to handle.
Fwiw, emergency bypass isnāt new. Itās about five years old now (introduced with iOS 10).
I use emergency bypass specifically with only a few people - my wife, my kids, and my brother and sister, who are primary caregivers for my mom. I keep my phoneās silent switch permanently on (and my watch on silent mode as well) but when I hear a ringtone or text tone, I know itās one of those people, whether DND is on or not. I agree with Josh that it would be nice if Apple added access to emergency bypass to the DND settings, but maybe itās best if it is hidden a little, as it is a pretty powerful feature.
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Iām with Simon.
Way too complicated. Look how long your article is! If I had to explain this to a 40-year-old, theyād nod, set it up sorta and then completely forget what they did. Someone in their 70s? Fuhgeddaboutit. I think the VIP idea in mail is a better direction. Theyāre grouped together, their emails are marked with the star, you can set different chimes for them.
If you must know, I turn off my iPhone at night. I still have a landline and the right people know they can always get me on the landline. And they know if they call me on the landline at 1am they are in serious trouble if it isnāt important. 
Dave
I didnāt know Emergency Bypass existed till last week. First, my phone was reset and while trying to remember where VIP was, I found Emergency Bypass and turned that on for my SO first, even though I was sure I hadnāt seen it before.
Then reading this thread, I realized I really hadnāt seen it before! And also realized I expected VIP to work the same way the OP did, and finally understood why my SOās texts werenāt coming through until 9am.
I use DND from 9pm to 9am because I have too many people in my life that donāt respect a clock. My SO does not use it, and while he doesnāt get as many texts as I do, he does get news notifications which drives me nuts after bedtime.
I had to setup VIPs simply because one of my clients always assumes something is wrong when my phone goes right to VM and calls back well within the 3 minute window. So that feature got turned off and I am realizing I need to add a few neighbors to VIP because wow, if something crazy like my house catching fire happens, I kind of want my phone to ring if they see it first!
Anyway, all this said because this is complicated and why is it so? Why do we need a Bypass when VIP should do the same thing? Or vice versa?
I like DND over the switch for three reasons: it still vibrates when the switch is off, it saves wear and tear on the case over the switch, and itās easier to either tell Siri to do it or swipe up to hit DND.
I want my SO and parents to be able to reach me at all times. My parents rarely use their cell phones much less text. My SO rarely calls me, so basically if any of those three call me, I definitely want to answer as itās likely important. But there are a LOT of times when I donāt want to hear from anyone else. Iāve even started to use it while sitting at my desk to get peace and quiet while working.
Diane
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Thatās pretty insulting and ageist to generalize about āsomeone in their 70sā. Iām nearly there and know more about the Mac (and preceding machines) than half the people on here. I can program rings around most, and have designed a dozen complex interactive websites in the last decade and still actively maintain a few. And in no way would I be āFuhgeddaboutitā reading and following those instructions. Youāll be older too someday, and I hope you manage to remember and then reflect upon your posting above.
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Tee hee!
No offense meant! Except! You are in a minority . . . you participate in the Tidbits forums. What I was saying is that in general the average person in their seventies is nowhere near your level of expertise and they are absolutely smacked senseless by the endless qualifications and buttons of unknown function that are now all too common. Many of them, even users of computers for decades, still donāt know about cut & paste.
Dave
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I think that adding a contact to vip is just as or even more inscrutable. There is nothing in the contacts app that adds an email address to vip, nothing in settings / mail. You have to get an email from somebody first to tap their small contact link at the top of the message and then tap add to vip. How many people know this?
[edit - forgot to add that the purpose of editing the contact was first to set a custom chime for texts or calls. Emergency bypass is part of that edit.]
And I agree that itās probably best not to be ageist and tar specific age groups as technically inproficent. I doubt that my kids know much about vip contacts or emergency bypass, unless Iāve told them. And I think that four steps is easily understandable. Just as understandable as the four steps required to add a contact to email VIP. Both could be better, but neither are horrible and people who donāt know about these steps arenāt missing all that much.
The thing that bothered me more about Joshās post was that messages may not sound on your iPhone if your Mac is running and not sleeping and you have messages set up. Iāve noticed this as well and it drives me nuts. I want the phone or watch to sound always - that is my main texting/messaging notification device. Unfortunately there isnāt even an option for this to turn that āfeatureā off.
Ageism is the last bastion of prejudice. You can do better, Dave.
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With all due respect to Josh, heās made it seem more complicated than it is with this convoluted article. Iāve explained this to plenty of people (even on old folks!), and itās not hard to grasp if you focus on what you want to accomplish instead of making a laundry list of every possible option and method.
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Letās stay on the topic of Emergency Bypass here, rather than straying into the age-related weeds.
Josh and I spent quite a lot of time on this article yesterday. It started short and to the point, but as we tested to make sure it actually worked as Apple suggested it should, we found that it was significantly less straightforward than it initially seemed. With quirks like Messages on the Mac capturing messages before they got to the iPhone and the way the Apple Watch didnāt honor the Text Tone of None, we didnāt feel that it was appropriate to pretend that it would just work the way someone might expect.
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Lolā¦ settings for settings, in case you donāt want to use the settings. Confused, anybody?! 
But still a really useful article to have as a reference. Thanks as ever, Josh and Adam.
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Yes, tried to go through it with my wife, whose patience ran out pretty quickly. This all needs to be more straightforward and comprehensible to the many. Iāve been debating lately turning off messages everywhere except my iPhone. Too many sources of interruption and my phone is with me always.
Young folk regard calling as an unwelcome intrusion, bad manners compared to text messaging, important that thereās a route for them to be able to get through, this will be useful Josh and Adam, thanks.
Now if only WhatsApp could be containedā¦ my Android wielding friends and the communities on there, thatās real noise. All my various āotherā messaging apps, from WhatsApp to Slack to Telegram, are all in a folder with the only permitted notification being a badge. If the folder has a badge I know thereās a message āsomewhereā and can look through them. But no noise, no thanks.
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I have two very similar contacts. One has entries for āRingtoneā and āText Toneā. (Interesting inconsistency of terminology.) The other only has āRingtoneā. Can anyone explain why this would be?
I donāt know. But what happens if you edit the contact, scroll down, and tap āedit fieldsā? Is there an option to add the field text tone?
Ringtone is in the dictionary spelled that way. I think because of the ending and beginning ātā, text tone looks better than texttone.
This is a little weird. When I visited the āedit fieldsā list āText Toneā wasnāt one of the available choices, but when I exited that list āText Toneā appeared. Unpredictable software can be frustrating.
Could it be related to one contact having a landline phone number that doesnāt accept texts, or is in a different format that suggests it canāt accept texts?