Introduced in iOS 16, Focus filters are excellent in principle. If you’re, for example, focused on work, you can block distracting apps, websites, and notifications. This even works in Messages, where you’ll only see texts from people in your Work focus.
There is a caveat to its implementation in Messages, however, and that makes it much less useful to me than it could be.
Personally, I often find myself distracted from good conversations when working on my Mac. Initially, I simply tried closing the Messages app and deleting it from my dock, but then found myself constantly reaching for my phone to check for texts. So I tried focus filters.
Focus filters in Messages
For the most part, it’s an effective solution. I can select a few people I’d like to chat with quickly, but delete everything else that isn’t necessarily important. It’s not just about notifications. In the Messages app, everyone excluded from the conversation list is removed.
I only have 4 people at my job, and only 1 of them is someone I talk to frequently – the others being people I always want to see in case they need to text me.
This worked very well, although there is still one big problem: if someone in your focus filter participates in a group chat, the entire group chat is included in your Messages app. Unfortunately, this means I’ve had to exclude some people from my job that I would otherwise like to have.
The feature certainly has a lot of potential, although I’d like to see Apple pay a little more attention to it. There should be more granularity around group chats, and perhaps even some integration with Screen Time to create a more holistic suite of digital mindfulness tools. Hopefully iOS 27 changes a thing or two.
What do you think of Focus and Focus Filters as they exist today? Let us know in the comments.
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