Learn about your options to turn off all text, app, and call notifications or distractions when you’re on an important phone call on your iPhone.
While browsing the Apple Community forum, I came across an interesting question: a person asked about turning off app notifications when they are on a phone call.
Now, it does make sense to have no sound or visual disturbances when you’re on an important phone call, such as a job interview or talking to a special someone after a long time. Secondly, the new notifications can also cause confusion when you’re taking notes during a phone call.
Because of these reasons, you may want to turn off all alerts during a call on your iPhone. Now, the good news is that it’s really easy to do this manually, and the bad news is that there isn’t yet a way to automate it, even in iOS 26. We’ll tell you about what works and what doesn’t.
Turn on DND when on a phone call
The best, easiest, and frankly the only practical way to disable all notifications when you’re on a phone call is to open Control Center from the call screen and tap the crescent moon icon to activate Do Not Disturb (DND).
DND will mute all text and app notifications so you can have a distraction-free calling experience. Apple also encourages you to turn on DND when you’re sharing your iPhone screen on FaceTime, WhatsApp, Telegram, or other video calls, so the people you’re sharing your screen with can’t read the contents of your text or sensitive app alerts.
The next crucial thing to keep in mind is that once you end the call, return to Control Center and turn off Do Not Disturb. If you forget to do so, you may miss important phone calls, texts, and app notifications.
Aside from DND, you can also turn on silent mode during a phone call. This will mute sound for new notifications but still show them temporarily as banners at the top of your iPhone screen.
Turn off banner notifications and sounds of disturbing apps
Imagine your work or personal life involves spending hours on phone calls, and there are a few gaming or unproductive apps whose notifications disturb you constantly. To tackle this, simply go to iPhone Settings > Notifications > app > and turn off Allow Notifications or turn off Sounds and Banners.
Similarly, if you get disturbed by a person or group chat, go to Messages, WhatsApp, Telegram, or the concerned texting app and mute them.
Turn off call waiting
When you’re on a phone call, and someone else calls you, their call will appear as waiting on your screen. While this is helpful for most people, if you think otherwise, you can turn it off from iPhone Settings > Apps > Phone > Call Waiting.
Disable Hold Assist Detection
Hold Assist is a new iOS 26 feature that lets your iPhone wait on hold for you during a customer care call. Once the live agent (i.e., a human support staff) joins your call, your iPhone will alert you to get back to the call.
Your iPhone can understand the waiting music on such calls and show a banner to activate Hold Assist. If you don’t want to get this visual alert, go to iOS 26 Settings > Apps > Phone and turn off Hold Assist Detection. Remember that even after turning it off, you can still enable Hold Assist when needed by tapping the three dots icon on the phone call screen.
What doesn’t work
Lastly, here are some things that don’t work to silence app notifications when on a phone call.
1) The Automation option inside the stock Apple Shortcuts app is one of the most powerful features that’s often overlooked. We have covered several tutorials related to this. Unfortunately, as of iOS 26, there isn’t a way to build an automation that puts your iPhone in Do Not Disturb mode when you’re on a phone call, and turns DND off once the call ends.
2) The ‘Set a Schedule’ option for Do Not Disturb and other Focus modes allows you to activate that said Focus automatically at specific times, locations, or app launches. So, you can set it to activate DND when you open the Phone app. But that’s not useful because when you pick up an incoming call or make a call, the call interface itself is technically different from the Phone app (screenshot below). Hence, DND or other Focus will turn off automatically, defeating the purpose.
3) I couldn’t build an effective iOS shortcut nor find one on the web that silences alerts when you’re on a phone call.
4) Lastly, there isn’t anything yet in the iOS Phone or FaceTime app settings that auto-mutes all alerts during phone calls.
So, you’re pretty much limited to manually turning on Do Not Disturb before going on an important call or during one. And after the call ends, you must remember to turn DND off, else you’ll miss useful app notifications, texts, and phone calls.
Also, check out: 15 new features added to the iPhone Phone app in iOS 26
