Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today
let's take a look at using the new Focus feature in macOS Monterey.
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One of the biggest new features of macOS Monterey is Focus. Previously we had Do Not Disturb.
You can turn it On or Off. In the Do Not Disturb mode you would get fewer notifications,
fewer interruptions. But now with Focus you can highly customize
Do Not Disturb. You can set alternate modes. So you can have several Do Not Disturb modes for
different situations and easily switch between them. First let's look at how to set this up.
You go into System Preferences and then to Notifications & Focus.
Switch to Focus. Here on the left you have a list of all of your Do Not Disturb modes
and then on the right you'll have the settings for the currently selected one.
So with the default Do Not Disturb we can customize it. Here we can set Allow Notifications
From and then people or apps. So, for instance, if you wanted to allow messages to get through
from certain people you could add them to this list here and they would be allowed. Likewise
you could go to Apps and you could add apps that would be allowed to send you notifications. So
now Do Not Disturb allows notifications from this person and also notifications from this
app. You could add as many as you want. You can select and remove them as well.
There are a few other options here. You could allow time sensitive notifications.
So in other words things from the Calendars App or Reminders that have a specific time to them.
You could allow calls to come in through FaceTime, of course, on your Mac that are in your Favorites,
all Contacts, Everyone, or any Group that you created in the Contacts App. You could decide
whether or not to allow repeated calls. This is when somebody calls you once and it doesn't go
through because of Do Not Disturb. Then they try you immediately again. This is a great feature to
have turned on and let loved ones know that they can reach you if they just try to call you twice.
So you can also set Automations for Do Not Disturb. So you can go down here and click
the Plus button and you could have a time-based automation. So you can have it automatically
turned On and Off at a certain time and you can pick the days of the week for the start
and end times. You could also add a location-based automation. This is more useful in the iPhone of
course but it will work on your Mac too. So if you use your MacBook at work and at home
you could actually setup those addresses in Contacts and have a mode automatically
go On depending upon your location. You could also have an App-based automation.
So when you're using a specific app you could have it automatically turn on a certain mode.
Now this is all great. But the real power here is to be able to have multiple Do Not Disturb modes.
So you can click on this list here and then there's a Plus button.
Then you could add a mode. It gives some suggestions here. For the most part Custom
and Suggestions are about the same thing with one exception here. We'll look at that in a minute.
We go to Custom and we can create something here that has our own custom name, a color, and then
we can assign some sort of icon to it. Then Add it. Now we can have different settings for this
than for the default Do Not Disturb. So we can have Allow Notifications From certain people,
certain Apps. We can even have it turn on automatically when we're using a specific app.
You can customize the Options for this as well. You can add as many of these as you want. So, for
instance, let's add a reading mode. Maybe for this we'll allow more people to get in touch with us
and maybe more Apps to bother us with notifications.
You can continue to add as many of these as you want. One special one here is Gaming. This one
actually creates a different automation for when you're using a wireless controller with your Mac.
Now these Focus modes sync across your devices as long as you have
this checkbox here. If you're using an iPhone you'll notice
different default ones. For instance Driving. Those will have special things just like Gaming
here for wireless controller. The Driving one will automatically go on while you're driving your car.
So once you have these set you could go all the way here to System Preferences and use the Switch
to turn On a mode. You select it and turn it On. However it's more likely you're going to want to
do that without going to System Preferences. You can do that by going into Control Center
and you'll see Focus here. Click that and it will list the different modes you have setup. So,
for instance, let's go to Reading. If I click that I can have it go on for one hour or until
this evening. Let's turn it on for a hour here and then you could see the icon appear
here in the Menu Bar indicating that I'm in that mode. If I click here you will see
I can easily switch to another one. Let's switch to Gaming, for instance, or Coding.
You can also turn it Off simply by selecting the one that you already
have turned on, like that. Then it will go Off and see none of these modes are now On.
If you want to permanently have Focus here in the Menu Bar you can do that by going
into Control Center and dragging Focus into the Menu Bar where you want it. Now you can
easily access all of these right here. I find this also makes it much easier just to switch
a mode On without a set time to turn it Off. You can just go in here, switch On a mode, and
you can see you're now in Reading mode. It's now going to turn Off after a hour or this evening.
You still have the Shortcut where you can Option click the time here and it will turn on Do Not
Disturb, the default mode. Option clicking again will turn it Off. If you've turned on
another mode, like Gaming here, Option clicking will turn that Off and then another Option click
will turn on the default Do Not Disturb mode. Like before you could go into System Preferences,
Keyboard, Shortcuts, and under Mission Control there is a turn Do Not Disturb On or Off
toggle shortcut that you can set. This will just be for that default Do Not Disturb mode.
It doesn't look like there is a way to set a keyboard shortcut for the other modes.
So there's also this checkbox here at the bottom, Share Focus Status. What happens there is if you
have that turned On somebody else who is using the Messages App on their Apple product would
see a little notification if they try to message you saying that notifications have been silenced
right now. So it's kind of useful. They get the message that maybe they shouldn't contact you
right now and if they do that you won't see that notification until you switch Focus modes or go to
the Messages App. Inside of Messages if you go to the i button right here you'll see that there is a
checkbox, Share Focus Status. So you can actually customize this for conversation. So you could have
this turned Off for conversations where you don't want people to see that and have it turned On for
conversations where you want somebody to see that little notification in their Messages App.
By the way when they do try to message you they'll get a little link there that
they can tap and that would send a notification through anyway.
So people have the ability to contact you in an emergency.
So there's a look at the new Focus feature in macOS Monterey. You can easily add and remove
these Focus modes. So I would suggest creating a few. But don't be afraid to edit them,
add more, remove others later on. It's probably going to take awhile for us all to get used to
this new functionality. Some of use may adopt this tool as something we use throughout the day.
Others may just may stick with the plain Do Not Disturb or not use it at all.
I hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.