Turning off beeps and notifications during a Zoom call or other meeting
Apple is on the verge of releasing Big Sur, or Mac OS 11. It’s a fantastic update and it does a lot of things so much better than previous versions of MacOS, but it does come with some changes you need to get used to.
One really important change is how to turn off notifications during a meeting, like a Zoom call, Google Meet or a Webex session. For anyone doing a lot of meetings online or remote learning, this is essential.
Most people will instinctively try to turn off sound, but that just results in not being able to hear the meeting, which is no bueno. Instead, just option-click on the day and time in the upper right hand corner of your display, and when you do this you’ll see a little moon icon appear in the menu bar. The little moon icon is identical to the Do-Not-Disturb (DND) icon on your iPhone, one of the many ways Apple is making the overall Mac and iOS experience more seamless. Turning Do-Not-Disturb on will silence all the beeps, etc. during your meeting, but will allow your Mac to still play your meeting audio through your speakers or whatever your desired sound output is.
When the moon icon appears, you can click on it to set your preferred Do-Not-Disturb expiration.
It appears at this time that Apple’s default for Do-Not-Disturb is “Always on” until you turn it off, and when you switch it to a different expiration, the next time you set it, it goes back to “Always on”. Maybe Apple will give us more power over this feature in the future.
At least for now, you can have your Zoom meetings beep or bleep-free.
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