Use Emergency Bypass and You’ll Never Miss a Call or Text from Important People

There’s little worse than missing an important call or text because your iPhone was in Do Not Disturb mode or because the Mute switch was engaged. If there are certain people—a spouse, parent, or child—whose calls and texts you always want to break through the cone of silence, iOS has a solution: Emergency Bypass. When enabled for a particular contact’s ringtone or text tone, Emergency Bypass ensures the sound and vibration will happen regardless of Do Not Disturb or the Mute switch position. To set up Emergency Bypass, edit the person’s contact card in the Phone or Contacts app, tap Ringtone, and enable Emergency Bypass. You can turn on Emergency Bypass separately for calls in the Ringtone settings and for texts in the Text Tone settings.

And remember, you can always set someone’s text tone to "None" and enable a vibration instead to ensure Emergency Bypass doesn’t allow a text to interrupt a movie, play, or concert. Though remember that that means that when your iPhone is not on silent mode it will still only vibrate for that contact.

Be careful though. If you have Emergency Bypass enabled and you must be absolutely certain that you don't get an interruption the best temporary solution is to power your iPhone off entirely. You probably should have your phone powered off when you are at a concert or in church anyway.