iOS 6 introduced “Do Not Disturb” mode, which allows you to decide when you receive notifications. You can either enable it manually or on a schedule. This can be useful if you are a light sleeper or if “silent mode” is just not quiet enough because it vibrates. And it’s not an all-or nothing solution: you can choose to allow phone calls from certain people to override it.
What does it do? Turning Do Not Disturb on prevents your phone from beeping, vibrating, or lighting up the screen while your screen is turned off. Messages will be waiting for you on your lock screen or Notification Center as if you had simply just not heard your phone. If you unlock your screen to check a message or to use an app, your phone will no longer be silent and messages and phone calls will work as normal until your screen is turned back off.
How do I configure it? Go to the Settings app > Notifications > Do Not Disturb. From there you can choose your schedule if you want, any exceptions (favorites, contact lists), and you can even allow repeated calls to come through if someone is really trying hard to get to you on the phone. Notably missing are options to set different schedules for different days of the week, for using your “VIP” list as an exception, and for exceptions for text messages.
How do I enable it? Simple. To manually enable, just go to the Settings app and switch the slider for Do Not Disturb to On. You’ll notice that there is a now a crescent moon in your status bar on the top of your screen.
Do Not Disturb a great feature that helps me to sleep better at night, though in a future update I’d really like to be able to set a different schedule for the weekend when I tend to stay up later. It would also be really cool if they added location awareness so that when you are at certain places DND mode automatically enables or disables.