iOS 12 added some great functionality to Do Not Disturb, including the ability to set Do Not Disturb for an hour, until the evening, or until you leave your current location. Since my phone is silent and I get all notifications through taps from my Apple Watch, I can ignore most distractions pretty easily. As a result, I never bothered to activate DND when entering a meeting or starting a phone call on my office phone.
The introduction of the Walkie-Talkie app in watchOS 5 changed all this. Walkie-Talkie messages from a pre-approved contact blurt out from your Watch, unless you’ve either activated DND or changed your availability in the Walkie-Talkie app. I’ve started activating DND for an hour before I make phone calls on my office phone, but what I really need is the ability to set DND for a brief period of time.
Federico Viticci of MacStories must have read my mind, as he shared a Shortcut on Twitter this morning to set Do Not Disturb with a specific expiration time.
Here’s what mine, which sets Do Not Disturb for 5 minutes, looks like:
You can download the Shortcut directly from this link. All credit goes to Federico for creating this – I just changed the duration.
I have this shortcut show up in the Shortcuts wiget, too. Tapping it immediately activates DND.
I’ve also created a trigger phrase in Siri Shortcuts, which works pretty quickly on the iPhone, but is slower to activate from the Watch. I hope this speeds up with the Series 4 Watch, which I should have on Friday.