How to Use Sleep Mode on Your IPhone
iPhone sleep mode has a ton of features to help you get a better night’s sleep, from turning off notifications to enabling sleep detection with your Apple Watch. Below is a guide showing you how to turn it on and off and how to get the most out of its features.
Why does the iPhone have a sleep mode?
The iPhone’s sleep mode is actually a sleep focus, so it has all the features of the focus mode, plus a few features related to sleep habits.
You can use any focus mode to:
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Silence notifications
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Optionally, send a message to people who are trying to message you (“Beth notifications are muted”).
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Skip certain notifications
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Allow calls to go through if the caller tries to call you repeatedly
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Change your home screen and lock screen
There are many great uses for focus modes, and we’ve put together a guide to their best features here . For example, once you customize your Home screen, you can remove work apps from it, but leave music and meditation apps. When it’s time to sleep, your phone will switch to displaying the main sleep screen. The normal Home screen will turn back on in the morning.
In addition to these functions, sleep focus also:
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Enables sleep detection on Apple Watch if you go to bed at that time.
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Sets an alarm (optional) that will ring when the sleep focus is over.
You can read more about sleep tracking in our guide to tracking sleep with Apple Watch .
How to Set Sleep Focus on iPhone
To customize the screens and notifications you can see while you sleep, go to Settings and then Focus. From here, click “Sleep” (or click + to create a “Sleep” focus if you don’t already have one). Select notification settings, home screen, and anything else you want to customize.
How to Set Up a Sleep Focus Schedule on iPhone
Sleep Focus is designed to be used on a schedule. Depending on the schedule, the sleep focus will turn on and off automatically.
To set a schedule, go to the Health app, tap Sleep, and scroll down to where it says “Your Schedule.” In the Full Schedule and Options section, you’ll see a place to edit your schedule. You can set different sleep and wake-up times for each day of the week.
From this screen, you can also toggle “use schedule to focus sleep,” which instructs the phone to turn on sleep focus at the time you’re scheduled to sleep. While on this screen, scroll down and set yourself a bedtime reminder, sleep results, and sleep goal (if you want).
How to Enable Sleep Focus on iPhone
Once you set up sleep mode, you can turn it on at any time, regardless of whether you have set a sleep schedule or not. Just go to Control Center (swipe down from the top right corner of your phone) and tap Focus . If the focus is not active, it will have a moon icon.
You can now select the focus mode you want to enable. Sleep should be on the list. Click on it and you will go into sleep mode.
How to disable sleep focus
Get up early? You can turn off the sleep focus at any time. Go to Control Center (swipe down from the top right corner of your phone) and you’ll see a button that says Sleep: On. Here you can select a new focus, such as Do Not Disturb or any other focus you have created. To turn off sleep mode without entering a new focus, simply tap sleep mode and it will turn off.
To turn off or change your sleep schedule for the future, tap the three dots on the sleep button. Tap Settings and your iPhone will take you straight to the Settings screen, where you can change or turn off your sleep schedule.