How to Override Do Not Disturb for Specific Apps

Do not disturb is one of those features that’s just on every phone and we take for granted. It’s pretty great though in helping us, even in the slight way that we have to be disciplined enough to turn on, break the cycle of notification anxiety.

While most people use Do Not Disturb mode on their devices at night when they’re sleeping, I tend to use it in any scenario that I think requires a bit more of my undivided attention. From dinners to movies, to meetings, I tend to tap that little moon icon a lot during the day. Thing is, in some of these scenarios I want fewer notifications but not to disable all of them (maybe I want to leave one app like Inbox enabled because I’m expecting an important email that I need to answer right away, for example).

Thankfully, on Android, there is a way to do this, it’s just buried a bit.

To do this, turn on Do Not Disturb like you normally would by sliding the notification shade down from the top of the device and tapping the icon.

Turn on Do Not Disturb

Then tap on the gear to get to settings.

Tap the Gear

Tap on Apps.

Tap on Apps

Then tap on the specific app you want to allow through Do Not Disturb.

Tap on the Specific App

Then tap Notifications.

Tap on Notifications

Then tap on Override Do Not Disturb/Set As Priority (depending on what Android device you have).

Turn on Override Do Not Disturb

Now, that app will be able to send notifications even when Do Not Disturb is enabled. Just keep in mind that if your device has different versions of Do Not Disturb (i.e. Alarms Only, Silent, and Priority) it needs to be set to the Priority setting for this to work. If you set it to Silent or Alarms Only, that will still block any apps even if enabled using this.

Repeat for any other apps you want to allow.

Hope that helps some people that might also need to enable certain apps to bypass Do Not Disturb. Let me know if it did in the comments below and don’t forget to follow me on social for more tips and tricks and other tech news.

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7 thoughts on “How to Override Do Not Disturb for Specific Apps”

  1. This does not work on my Pixel 3. Do not disturb blocks my music. Its either “block all media” or “block no media”.. pretty friggin useless and unprofessional.

    I guess i need two phones.. one to use as a phone and one to listen to music.

    1. Sorry I’m confused. What do you ultimately want to accomplish and maybe I can help? You want to play your music but have no notifications while listening? If that’s the case just use the normal do not disturb mode and that doesn’t work for you?

  2. Weird. I used to have the priority override option, I’m still on Android 7 (Nougat) and I have a couple of apps that I previously set to override and yet I can’t set any more to override because the option is missing. I wanted to set an security system notification app to always alert regardless of DND state.

  3. Does Pixel 2 not have this? I don’t see the Do Not Disturb option at all. or is it an Android 9.0 + Issue?

      1. I have the features describes in the article you sent, which is not what I was looking for. I am looking for the settings you described in your article: to allow specific apps to override do not disturb. Seems to not exist anymore after they overhauled do not disturb, which doesn’t make sense considering the previous do not disturb worked better.

  4. ‘My Huawei P30 does not have “Override Do Not Disturb/Set As Priority” any suggestions. I need my security camera alerts to override DND

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