How to Set a Do Not Disturb Keyboard Shortcut on Mac
Want to toggle Do Not Disturb mode on the Mac with a keyboard shortcut? You can easily enable a custom keyboard shortcut to turn on or off Do Not Disturb mode in MacOS, and we’ll show you how to set it up.
Do Not Disturb mode on the Mac is one of the best features you can use if you want to focus on a task, and not be distracted by the myriad endless notifications and alerts that pop up on the Mac. Enabling and disabling the feature with a keyboard shortcut offers a quick way to toggle the feature off or on as quick as possible and at any time.
How to Set a Do Not Disturb Keyboard Shortcut on Mac
To be able to toggle Do Not Disturb off or on by keyboard shortcut on Mac, you’ll need to enable a keyboard shortcut for it first. Here’s how to do that:
- Go to the Apple menu and select “System Preferences”
- Go to “Keyboard” and then choose the “Shortcuts” tab
- Select “Mission Control” from the Shortcuts options
- Locate “Turn Do Not Disturb On/Off” and make sure that is checked to be enabled
- Click directly to the right of “Turn Do Not Disturb On/Off” and then press a keyboard shortcut combination to set as the Do Not Disturb keyboard shortcut
In the example here, the keystroke combination SHIFT FN F10 was set as the keyboard shortcut for enabling and disabling Do Not Disturb mode.
You can set any keyboard shortcut you want for this purpose, just make sure it’s unique and does not overlap with another keystroke combination or feature. Applying modifier keys like Shift, Option, Control, FN can be an easy way to avoid conflict with other keyboard shortcuts on the Mac. Whether FN SHIFT F10 works for your particular situation is going to depend on your individual Mac setup.
How to Toggle Do Not Disturb ON or OFF by Keyboard Shortcut on Mac
Once the keyboard shortcut for toggling Do Not Disturb mode is enabled, you can use it at anytime by pressing the keystroke combination you set in the above steps. In the example here, that would be pressing SHIFT FN F10, so therefore toggling the feature would be as so:
- Press SHIFT FN F10 to enable Do Not Disturb mode instantly
- Press SHIFT FN F10 to disable Do Not Disturb mode immediately
When Do Not Disturb mode is on, all notifications and alerts will not show up on the Mac, but they will still be contained within the Notification Center.
When Do not Disturb mode is off, all alerts and notifications will come through to the Mac as usual, showing up as pop-up alerts in the upper right corner of the screen.
Do Not Disturb mode is one of the most useful features available on the Mac and on the iOS side of things too, where using Do Not Disturb mode on iPhone and iPad can offer some peace and quiet when you’re on the go as well.
If you find yourself toggling this feature on frequently, you might want to set a schedule for Do Not Disturb on Mac to be automatically on at times of your choosing. And if you don’t like the annoying notifications at all then you can prevent all notifications on the Mac by setting Do Not Disturb mode in perpetuity to be always enabled using a scheduling trick, which will make it so your Mac is never harangued by the alerts and notifications from everything under the sun.
This is all fine, but it would be much more useful to have a shortcut for “Do Not Disturb For 1 Hour”. How often did you forget to turn it off?..
How can we do that?
Great tip thanks!!