I’m a big fan of the Do Not Disturb (DND) feature in both iOS and OS X Mavericks. Every night at 10PM, DND turns on automatically, and I don’t hear any notifications and such until the next morning. Ah, precious silence!
This “how to” will walk you through the simple steps of turning on DND, and setting the different options for the feature. And don’t worry, we’ll do it very quietly, so as not to disturb anyone…
Accessing the Do Not Disturb Settings
To access the settings for DND, just click the Apple icon () in the upper left-hand corner of your Mac Desktop, and click “System Preferences…” Now, click on “Notifications.”
In the left pane you’ll see “Do Not Disturb.” Click on that.
As seen in the screenshot below, there are only a few options available here, but they are useful ones.
First, we have the option to turn on Do Not Disturb. You can set it to turn on at a set time, and then turn off at a set time. This is very handy if your bedroom also serves as your office. No more notifications going off in the middle of the night.
Also available is a checkbox you can check to turn on DND when you’re mirroring your Mac’s desktop to TVs and projectors. This will save you some embarrassment when you’re giving a presentation to the board of directors and your significant other sends you a “frisky” message via iMessage.
Finally, there are two options here for FaceTime calls. You can decide here whether or not to allow FaceTime calls through from “everyone,” just your “favorites,” or not at all. You can also decide whether to allow those calls through if they call a second time within three minutes.
Toggling DND Manually
If you find yourself in need of silence to work your way through a report, or a how to article, you can manually turn Do Not Disturb off by accessing Notification Center, (either click the three line Notification Center icon in the upper right-hand corner of your desktop, or swipe left with two fingers from the right edge of your trackpad), and pulling down to display the DND toggle switch. (As you can see, DND will automatically turn off the next day, in case you forget to do it yourself.)
An even faster way to toggle DND on or off is to hold down the option key on the keyboard and click the Notification Center icon, or set up a hotkey combo to do it in “System Preferences” -> “Keyboard” -> “Shortcuts.”
That’s all there is to it. With just a few clicks you can tell the rest of the world to screw off so you can get some work done. Or take a nap. Your call.
