We all the love the Do Not Disturb Feature that is included on the iPad, iPad Mini and iPhone, the problem is, it has a few little issues that are “disturbing”.
The first batch of problems occurred back in January when a bug was uncovered in the scheduling that would mean the iPad would remain silenced, even after the scheduled “to” time. This is due to the way Apple handle dates within iOS and OSX, Apple’s response is it will work again on the 7th and no, it will not be fixed with an update before then. We have seen issues with Apple dates in the past, such as reverse daylight savings and no alarm clocks.
Since then lots of bugs have been reported but a common theme was people seem to really struggle with the DND (Do Not Disturb) usability, which is not like Apple at all. For a guide on how to use the Do Not Disturb feature visit this tutorial.
Once you have figured out how to use it properly and still think you have an issue keep reading. iOS updates will often remove the DND settings as they are set back to default. I can see why Apple has done this, they add a new DND feature that will affect how it performs, rather than letting you find out there has been a change after you have missed a few calls they set it back to default so you hear everything. Personally I would rather be woken by an unimportant call rather than risk missing an extremely important call. Also you should keep in mind that the settings are not reverted to default after every iOS update, only when the Do Not Disturb settings may have been affected.
One issue lots of people seem to have is setting Allow Calls From, when this is set to Everyone, guess which calls are silenced? None of them. Another common one is the iPad Mini Do Not Disturb not working at all, this is almost always caused when playing with the iPad Mini to test the Do Not Disturb. Unless the silence setting is set to Always ask yourself if your screen is locked and black? If the iPad Mini isn’t locked and the screen black the DND won’t be engaged and you will receive alerts. Another extremely common complaint on the iPad Mini is the Do Not Disturb stops the alarm working. This is likely to be true if you are using a non-Apple alarm clock. In my opinion Apple needs to provide some kind of access to third party developers to override DND in these cases. The standard native Apple iOS alarm clock can bypass the Do Not Disturb, as far as I know no third-party alarm clocks will bypass it.
Another extremely common “My iPad Mini Do Not Disturb is Not Working” complaint is over the “Allow Calls From” feature. The most common out of all of them is emails don’t make a sound even though the sender is in my favourites list. I would love it if “Allow Calls From” did cover emails, unfortunately as you can see “Allow Calls From” only affects calls and FaceTime calls, all other sounds will be silenced. Quite a common issue is again related to usability and it’s the manual vs scheduled selection, It’s not a bug or software problem, it’s just that users don’t know what will happen when both are selected. The way I think about it is the manual option is an override. When the current time reaches the scheduled quiet time you can see the manual switch move. If you move it back DND will be off until the next scheduled quiet time. If the manual switch was already in DND when the scheduled quiet time is reached nothing changes, however when the end of the quiet time is reached the DND will turn off in accordance with the schedule, so it’s not quite an override.
If you are receiving calls with DND on check the “Allow Calls From” settings, lots of people select Everyone which obviously allows calls from everyone. Another thing to check is the Repeated Calls setting; people (mainly salesmen) are starting to understand that if they ring twice within the 3 minutes you might answer.
The following issues aren’t common but they do happen from time to time and can normally be fixed by resetting all the settings (Settings => General => Reset => Reset All Settings), otherwise it’s a factory reset required.
Some people report they see the Moon all the time on their iPad Mini or iPhone, even with manual off and outside the scheduled quiet hours, resetting all the settings deals with this one but it may come back.
Others have said even though I have it set to accept calls from Favourites, if a call comes in from a favourite it does not ring. To deal with this one ensure you are running the latest iOS version, if this doesn’t fix it restore the phone to factory settings and test it before restoring your iPad Mini backup. If this didn’t fix the issue you may be suffering from the Name Display issue with iPhones. Users have been able to confirm this by having Rogers (Fido also affected) temporarily disable Name Display on my account, after which my iPhone’s Do Not Disturb and Call Block immediately began to work as advertised.
The issue is now stuck between Rogers and Apple, Apple develop the iPhone, iPad and iPad Mini to be flexible enough to work with all the various carriers around the world and their various features. Rogers say it’s a software issue, which is Apple’s department. It is perfectly understandable that they don’t want to touch or admit any responsibility even though they are the only carrier affected by the problem, due to it being a feature only they provide. Personally I feel this has been dragged out far longer than it should have been, Apple and Rogers have intercompany coordinators who handle this type of dispute.
AppleCare often after much testing and resetting say the issues listed above are hardware related, this is extremely rare especially as often the problem didn’t occur before an iOS update, unfortunately in these rare cases you can only wait for the next update and hope they have fixed the issue.