Re: Automate focus

I switched to a fully MDM managed corporate device for work related things. Work has no business on my personal devices anymore.

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I use Focus modes mainly to turn work off on a schedule and this works fine for day-to-day routines but less for event and location based actions. Shortcuts automation can leverage that for the most part.

Some apps may not respect or partly respect Focus settings, i.e. MS Teams ignores the Silence notifications and continue to show badges. Therefor I added an extra step in the automation to open the Notification settings for Teams. Apple doesn’t allow to automate notification settings for specific apps through Shortcuts.

Focus profiles helps me not to get distracted by work related notifications and thus focus on not-working.

This is my itch I am scatching, your use-case might be different. Go play with the options.

Vacation

Disclaimer: this only works with the Mail.app, not a 3rd party app.

• In the work calendar, create an event with a title and repeat this daily for the during of the vaction. The repeat is important because Start date is a trigger in the automation.

• In Shortcuts create a new automation:

  • When: At 1 minute after the end of scheduled Focus, run daily.
  • Do: Find all Calendar Events where All of the following are true:
    • Start date is Today
    • Title is <event title>

    • Calendar is Work calendar

    • Count Items in Calendar Events

    • Set variable Event to Count

    • If Event is greater than or equal to 1
      • Turn Focus Profile on until Turned Off
      • Optional:
        • URL: prefs:root=NOTIFICATIONS_ID&path=com.microsoft.skype.teams
        • Open URL
    • Otherwise
      • Turn Focus profile Off
    • End If

Location

In Shortcuts create a new automation for each below:

• When I Arrive at Location Set Focus Focus profile Off
• When I Leave Location Set Focus Focus profile On