Those constant notifications, buzzing sounds of messages, emails being received constantly on your smartphone can be a cause of much irritation, especially while you are attending meetings at work. We are forced to power off our phone or put it on silent mode. But now you need not worry! Thanks to the inclusion of ‘Do not disturb’ mode in iOS recently, it has become quite easy to silence your phone without the need to power it off; the process is explained below:

Step 1) Swipe up from the bottom of your screen on your iOS device to launch the Control centre as shown below in the image and click on the crescent moon ( ) to turn on the ‘Do Not Disturb’ mode which will appear in the status bar. When the device is unlocked, a half crescent moon will be displayed in the status bar across the battery icon, and a full one when it is locked.

Learn how to enable ‘Do not disturb’ mode on your iPhone and iPad

Step 2) Now to schedule the Do Not Disturb mode, click on Settings on your home screen ---> and tap on Do Not Disturb as shown encircled below in the image:

Step 3) Upon entering Do Not Disturb window, tap scheduled to turn it on as shown by arrow beneath, You can select the block of time you want it enabled for, as shown below:

Step 4) Now to customise the Do Not Disturb settings, click on ‘Allow Calls from’ to display the options, you can select to allow calls from ‘No one’, from ‘Everyone’ or numbers in your ‘Favourites’ list stored on your phone. In this case, ‘No One’ has been selected as highlighted by the checkmark beneath.

Step 5) Turn on ‘Repeated Calls’: If someone calls you twice within three minutes, the call won’t be silenced. You can choose to silence calls and notifications always or only when the device is locked as shown in the screenshot below:

The writer is a freelance columnist with diversified interests in Technology, Finance & History. He tweets@MohammadFarooq_

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, July 3rd, 2016