Your friends and family keep asking you why your notifications are disabled? If you don't actually use a focus mode like Do Not Disturb, it will probably give you a headache.
This happened to me this morning. I use Sleep Focus at night and turn it off as soon as I wake up. Otherwise, my Apple Watch just shows a big green digital clock all day. This is not good.
After a colleague asked me why I was muting their messages during a call, I double-checked that nothing was in focus mode. Not a Mac, not an iPhone, not an Apple Watch.
The fix was a typical turn off and on again. Well, in that case, turn it on and off again. One round of this on one device resolved the occasional message about disabled notifications for another person. I guess the feelings weren't hurt.
The Real Thing Seen on the Apple Support Forums
It turns out this is what more and more people are seeing. iPhone users have reported experiencing this issue on various iPhone models running iOS 15 and iOS 16. If you too are experiencing this issue, the good news is you are not alone. This probably means that Apple will try to fix this problem sooner rather than later.
The bad news is that there is no real workaround at the moment. If you are not in focus mode, there is nothing to turn off. Just keep switching between these focus modes.
Oh, and one more thing. This bug does not actually turn off notifications when contacts see this message. It just creates awkward situations where people think you're ignoring them. On the other hand, maybe it's just Siri making assumptions…
Not using focus modes? Learn how to expand your focus modes in iOS 16.
