Spend any time working and also you’re seemingly to get interrupted with notifications—whether or not it is incoming emails, system updates, new alerts, a pop-up in regards to the subsequent monitor in your playlist, or all of them collectively. This barrage of distractions makes it difficult to maintain your move and keep targeted.
Microsoft feels your ache, and it has added a function referred to as Focus in Windows 11. It can be utilized to pause all or some notifications for a set time frame, in addition to monitor what you get finished throughout that point. You select how lengthy these durations are, and you’ll entry the function from varied elements of the working system.
Exactly how Focus works is up to you, but when wanted it could actually activate Do Not Disturb in Windows, conceal notification badges on taskbar icons, cease taskbar icons from flashing, and present a timer onscreen. If you select to allow Do Not Disturb, you will not see any notifications pop up—they will all be delivered quietly to the Notification Center.
Once your Focus session is over, you’ll be able to open up Notification Center (by clicking on the time and date in the decrease proper nook) to see what you missed. While it is not probably the most subtle of productivity-boosting instruments, Focus appeals in its simplicity and accessibility, and chances are you’ll discover it turns into a key a part of your day by day workflow.
How to Use Focus
Do Not Disturb is a giant a part of Focus, so it is price getting this arrange the best way you need it. Open up Settings from the Windows Start menu, then click on System, Notifications, and Set precedence notifications. This helps you to specify which apps and occasions are necessary sufficient to override the default Do Not Disturb habits (the place notifications are quietly delivered to the Notification Center in the background).
Further down on the Notifications menu, you are in a position to customise the best way notifications work for particular person apps: You can have some apps not present up in the Notification Center both, for instance, and you’ll change the precedence of app notifications (greater precedence alerts seem greater up in the Notification Center listing).
With that finished, you’ll be able to configure Focus. Open up Settings from the Windows Start menu, then click on System (on the left) and Focus (on the proper). You’ll see you’ll be able to customise how the mode operates: whether or not or not Do Not Disturb is enabled when you’re focusing, whether or not or not a timer seems, and so forth. You also can set the default period for a Focus session.
