Do not disturb is an absolute must-have for those who need to be uninterrupted all day or at specific times. You certainly don’t want to hear your phone ring during an important meeting…especially when it’s announced that your best friend is sending you a video of an adorable cat. As tempting as it is to see, it may not be considered effective. However, there may be certain contacts that you want that can interrupt you at any time.
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For example, let’s say you have a significant other and you want to make sure you never miss a message from them.
Or maybe it’s your boss, your parents, your best friend or your agent… those are pretty important people in your life and stopping them from contacting you can cause all sorts of problems.
Then you might wonder, “Why even use Do Not Disturb?”
Well, there are simply times when you want to be disturbed as little as possible. This can be especially true if you are constantly flooded with notifications and you only need to be offline for a while.
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I’ve set up a rule on my phone so that as soon as I walk in the door, Do Not Disturb mode kicks in and I don’t have to worry about the never ending stream of notifications. However, there are still some individuals that I would like to hear immediately. So I made an exception for those individuals so that their conversation can skip Do Not Disturb mode.
Let me show you how to do this.
It’s all about Starred and Priority conversations
One of the limitations of this is that you cannot select individual contacts to avoid Do Not Disturb. However, you can choose to join a Starred or Priority conversation. Starred contacts are contacts you’ve starred and Priority conversation are the chats (from Android Messages) that you have added to the priority list.
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If you haven’t added contacts as favorites or enabled certain conversations as a Priority, I recommend that you do so before attempting to activate a contact through DND. If you only have one contact that you want to allow through DND, you’ll only want to add that contact as a Preferred Conversation or Starred Contact.
How to allow specific users to skip Do Not Disturb
What you need: The only thing you need is an Android device running at least Version 11 of the operating system, which includes most Android phone released in the past few years. That’s it. Let’s make some exceptions.
Open the Android Settings app from the App Drawer or the gear icon in the Notification shade. Once open, navigate to Notifications > Do Not Disturb. From within that window, tap People.
Configure who can ignore DND with just one tap. Screenshots of Jack Wallen/ZDNET
First, we will configure Messages. In the People window, tap Messages. You will then see five options: Starred Contacts, Contacts, Preferred Conversations, Anyone, and None.
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Let’s say you have added all the necessary contacts as Starred and you want to allow all of them to ignore DND. For that, tap the checkbox associated with Starred and you’re good to go.
You can configure five different options to ignore DND. Screenshots of Jack Wallen/ZDNET
Allowing phone calls through Do Not Disturb is similar to configuring Messages. Go back to the People window and tap Calls. In the resulting screen, tap Starred Contacts to allow your starred friends to contact you by phone when Do Not Disturb is on.
You only have four options for Do Not Disturb bypass calls. Screenshots of Jack Wallen/ZDNET
Once you’ve dealt with these two options, everyone you’ve added will be able to use Android’s Do Not Disturb feature.
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My only complaint with this is that I want to be able to set specific contacts for this and not have to rely on Starred or Priority conversations. If Google is listening, that would be a great addition to Android 14.
