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Constant access to the internet and simply having your phone on your person at all times makes it very easy to always stay connected to the rest of the world. While generally a good thing, this can be a hindrance in some areas of life, especially if you're trying to rush a deadline or concentrate on a project that requires undivided attention. To ensure your friends' messages about whether they should treat themselves to ice cream don't interrupt you while you're working, iPhones have a feature called Focus.
This is one of the most useful iOS features that you should be aware of, as it blocks all non-urgent notifications and calls that would otherwise cause your phone to beep or buzz, making it to where only the notifications you need pop up. This might lead to misunderstandings and missed plans, however, where your family and friends won't know if you ever saw their message or not. That's where the Focus Status or Share Focus Status feature comes in.
Enabling Share Focus Status makes it so that, whatever Focus mode you've set up — whether it's for sleep, work, or a custom Focus — gets shared with other iPhone or iMessage users trying to contact you. This way, they'll know you're unavailable and likely won't see their messages.
How to set up Focus and turn on Share Focus Status
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You can set up Focus mode on your iPhone by opening the Settings app and then tapping on Focus. From here, you can choose from one of the existing Focus options, set up one that your phone recommends for you, or tap on the plus icon toward the top right to create a custom Focus mode. You can then tap the Focus mode that you'd like to be in to activate it, setting all the notification permissions for apps and people, locking certain apps, and opening the dedicated home screen. You can check if Focus mode is turned on by seeing if the dedicated Focus icon is shown in the top-left corner of your screen, just like how a crescent moon means you're in Do Not Disturb mode.
The feature to make it to where your Focus status is shared with anyone trying to message you can be found here as well. Under Settings > Focus, tap on Focus Status to enable it, and from there, it will show that you have notifications silenced whenever someone with a compatible device tries contacting you.