Snapchat added the Do Not Disturb feature last year, and it’s been doing very well among some users. It provides the ability to mute our friends without notice and provides the tool we all want for certain members of our social groups. So, can you use Snapchat’s Do Not Disturb feature for one person or is it a general setting? If you have annoying friends, how can you tweak Snapchat to use it better? Keep reading to find out!
Today’s Snapchat bears little resemblance to the app launched years ago. It has constantly improved, thanks to both user feedback and the company’s own ideas. I think today’s Snapchat is way better than that early version, even if it didn’t have all the features we wanted.
Do Not Disturb was the long-awaited answer to the question of friends who post too much or don’t shut up. It’s the middle ground between putting up with the noise on Snapchat or dealing with all the social fallout that comes with unfriending and unfriending.
Snapchat Do Not Disturb
In answer to the original question, you can use Snapchat’s Do Not Disturb feature for individual or group chats. Setting it up is also simple.
- Engage in a conversation on Snapchat.
- Select the person or group you want to mute.
- Press and hold their name until the pop-up menu appears.
- Select Do Not Disturb.
You will still be able to follow and access the chat as normal, but you will no longer receive notifications from the person or group you muted. They will not be informed and according to them things are as usual.
Do Not Disturb and Mute Sound
We know that Do Not Disturb prevents you from receiving notifications from certain users or groups on Snapchat. What about the Mute function? How different?
Mute works differently from DND in that it removes a Story from view instead of suppressing notifications. For example, if you have a friend who constantly sends lame Stories you don’t want to read, you can mute them and they will be sent to the back of your Stories queue.
They will still be in the queue, but they will not open automatically like the others and you will have to manually select them to see them. Like Do Not Disturb, the user is not notified and does not know that you have muted it. If they check their stats, they’ll probably notice that you don’t watch their stories much, otherwise they’ll just be ignorant.
To mute someone, do this:
- Open your friends list in Snapchat.
- Select their profile and then Settings.
- Select Mute Story.
- Confirm your selection.
As you’ll see, you can set Do Not Disturb this way as well as from within the chat.
Both tools allow you to stay friends with the person, communicate with each other, join the conversation, swap Snaps and all the usual stuff, but you can control what you see a little more. These are very useful tools in managing social media and, as I understand it, are underestimated.
The only thing to remember is that both Do Not Disturb and Silent are set and forgotten. There is no timer or time limit. If you want to start hearing from the person or group or see their Stories again, you have to manually select them and undo the settings.
Using Do Not Disturb to avoid conflict
If you haven’t lived in a cave for the past ten years, you’ll know that social media is now a big part of our daily lives and has a far-reaching impact on how we live. What can easily be dismissed as ‘just an app’ is much more than that for some people.
There are now fields of science and psychology dedicated to understanding the effects of social media on our lives. One area of study is how we handle rejection or conflict on social media. The short answer is usually not good. Even if you’re not afraid of a little conflict in your life, anything we can do to avoid conflict on social media is a good thing. People behave differently online, and someone who doesn’t usually blink at a personal or verbal reprimand can react very differently on social media. This is one of the reasons why Snapchat introduced the Do Not Disturb and Mute tools. So users can stay in the app and manage their lives without conflict.
Do you use Do Not Disturb on Snapchat? Use Silent? Do you have any stories about these two features? If you do, tell us below!
