Take Control of
Focus

Apple’s Focus feature promises to silence distractions so you can work, drive, sleep, play games, or just stare at the wall in peace. But Focus is also one of Apple’s most confusingly layered features, with options scattered across devices, apps, and system settings that interact in ways that aren’t always obvious. This book brings Focus into…focus.

Author Glenn Fleishman walks you through every aspect of Focus, from the basics of activating and deactivating Focus modes to the deep customization options that let you control exactly which people, apps, and alerts can break through your self-imposed isolation—and which can’t. You’ll learn how preset modes like Do Not Disturb, Sleep, and Driving work—and how to customize them or even create custom modes tailored to your routine.

Beyond the Focus feature, you’ll get to understand how Apple manages audible alerts with Silent mode, where to set bypasses so emergency contacts and people important to you can always reach you by calling, and what exactly sharing your Focus state with others means. The book opens with practical case studies to help you understand how Focus can suit you—and how it might be overkill.

Whether you want to sleep more soundly, work without interruption, read a few pages of a goshdarned book without a bleep from your devices, or just stop your phone from buzzing during dinner, this book gives you the understanding and step-by-step instructions to shape and filter Focus and related attention-minimizing features to your needs.

The book includes insight from a credentialed ADHD/executive function coach on best practices for Focus, too.

This book helps you:

• Understand how Focus interacts with other attention systems like Silent mode, Notifications settings, haptic feedback, and visual alerts.
• Activate and manage Focus modes on iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch.
• Understand which Focus modes are triggered by particular actions, like connecting to CarPlay or starting a workout in the Fitness app.
• Create scheduled times, pick locations, and choose apps that can activate Focus modes for you automatically.
• Control exactly which people and apps can bypass a Focus mode to notify you of something important.
• Customize preset modes like Do Not Disturb, Sleep, Driving, Fitness, and Gaming, or create your own.
• Sync Focus states across devices (or not).
• Use Focus Filters to show or hide accounts or other elements in Calendar, Mail, Safari, and other apps when a Focus mode is active.
• Integrate Focus with Shortcuts to automate mode changes, trigger actions when modes activate, and build more complex workflows.
• Use Sleep mode effectively with the Health app’s sleep schedule, Apple Watch sleep tracking, and Wind Down notifications.
• Evaluate Apple Intelligence’s Reduce Interruptions, understanding what it can and can’t do—and what Apple won’t tell you about how it works.
• Share your Focus status via Messages and other apps, and manage per-contact visibility and the Notify Anyway workflow.

About Glenn Fleishman

Take Control Books Executive Editor Glenn Fleishman spent 30 years writing for publications like The Atlantic, Fast Company, The Economist, The New York Times, Macworld, and TidBITS. Glenn now focuses his time on Take Control Books, Six Colors (as a columnist), and his own micro-publishing endeavor, Aperiodical, where he writes books about type, printing, comics, and language history, like Six Centuries of Type & Printing and How Comics Are Made. You can find Glenn on Mastodon and Bluesky. Reach him by email at glenn@glennf.com.