If you are like me, next to my bed each night is my Android phone or tablet. I use either of them for reading in the evening to wind down and given that my mobile number is the only number most of my family have for me, I want to have it near me in case of emergencies. That said, I work for a global company and I get email at all hours of the day and night and the occasional call when someone forgets the world is round and we have time zones. What I don’t want – and my wife really doesn’t want – are these tones and rings waking us up at night. Likewise, I don’t want the vibration of my phone sitting on my nightstand waking me up.
There have been a variety of apps that give you a Do Not Disturb like function for Android but with Android Marshmallow, it went native. Google now includes a DND mode in their latest build of Android and it is highly customizable for your needs. In fact, you can even have multiple rules for different days of the week. All of this can be configured with just a few taps and I will show how to set these up so you can take advantage of this great new feature.
To access the Do Not Disturb functions in Android Marshmallow, go to Settings and navigate to Sound & notification. Once there you will see a Do not disturb option about halfway down the
Do Not Disturb Rules in Android Marshmallow
screen. Tap it and that brings you to settings for DND. The first menu brings you to the priority settings. Priority settings are what you define as a priority that interrupts your DND mode. By default, things like Reminders, Events, Messages and Calls. You can enable or disable the reminders and events while with Messages and Calls you can select if any message or call interrupts your do not disturb settings or you can have any contact you have on your phone or just contacts you have starred (marked as important). I personally use Priority settings a lot for calls and for my DND settings. My wife, kids, grandfather and parents are starred in my accounts as is my boss at work.
The next setting in the Do not disturb area is Automatic rules. This is where you will actually configure your rules on when you can and cannot be interrupted. The beauty of how Google implemented the DND feature in Android Marshmallow is that you can setup multiple rules and in fact they have already setup two samples for you when you go into the settings the first time. You could for example have a Weekend rule where you have anyone can call or message you while you have a Week rule for Monday through Friday where your DND mode goes to priority contacts only after 9:00PM in the evening. When you tap on a rule, you can name that rule, setup the days it is enabled, the start and end times and who can contact you in Do not disturb. One nice thing: Even if you have DND enabled, you will still get your alarms (if you use your phone as an alarm clock) that you have setup.
It won’t take you long to really appreciate how easy but how sophisticated Google’s implementation of Do Not Disturb is in Android Marshmallow. I have been using it for a while now and I haven’t had any issues with it and have always received my alarms as expected and only my priority marked contacts were able to contact me when I had DND enabled.
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