Notification filters
A notification filter is a named set of choices about which alerts reach this iPhone, and how loudly: Home, Away, Sleep, or any you make. One filter is in force at a time, and switching between them is one tap. A filter only decides what this iPhone hears; your server, its recordings and everyone else’s alerts carry on exactly as before. This iPhone only
Settings › Notification Filters holds them all.
- Active filter: the one in force. None lets every alert through at its usual level.
- Edit “Away”: the cameras, objects, zones and quiet hours of the filter in force.
- Snoozes: quiet everything for a while. See Snooze and mute.
- Filters: every filter you have. Tap one to change it, whether or not it’s active. Touch and hold to rename, duplicate or delete it.
- Held back: the alerts your filters kept from this iPhone in the last day, and why.
Start with the suggestions
Section titled “Start with the suggestions”To begin with, Home, Away and Sleep are listed as Suggested. A suggested filter lets every alert through until you change it: they’re starting points, not settings. Change one, or make it active, and it becomes yours; the other suggestions then disappear. Or tap New filter and name your own, such as Vacation.
If no filter is active and you change something, such as turning a camera’s alerts off from its live view, the app starts a filter called Home for you and makes it active.
Switch filters
Section titled “Switch filters”Switch the filter in force from any of these, whichever is closest:
- Active filter, at the top of Settings › Notification Filters.
- The title menu on the Cameras tab, under Active filter.
- The Notifications widget, on the Home Screen. See Widgets.
- The Notification Filter control, in Control Center or on the Lock Screen.
- Shortcuts and automations: When I leave home, set Fregata to Away. See Siri and Shortcuts.
Switching takes a moment to reach every server; the screen says Switching… until each one has confirmed it.
What a filter holds
Section titled “What a filter holds”Each filter has, for each server:
- Alerts from your server: off holds back everything from that server, on this iPhone, until you turn it on again.
- Quiet hours: see Quiet hours.
- Cameras: one row per camera, with a summary of what’s set: No alerts, Not for Car, Some zones quiet, a level, and so on. Tap a camera for its settings.
A filter is complete on its own, for every server, so switching from Home to Away replaces every choice at once. Edits to the active filter apply straight away; edits to another filter apply when you make it active.
One camera in a filter
Section titled “One camera in a filter”- Alerts from this camera: off holds back everything from it.
- Level: how loudly its alerts arrive. See Levels.
- Objects: for each kind of object the camera alerts on, Alert, a level of its own, or Don’t alert.
- Zones: turn off the zones you don’t care about.
Two rules decide whether an alert that mixes things gets through:
- Objects: an alert is held back only when everything in it that can raise an alert is set to Don’t alert. With cars off, a car alone is held back, but a car and a person together still alert, because of the person.
- Zones: an alert is held back only when every zone it touched is off. An alert in no zone at all always gets through.
Snooze this camera… at the bottom snoozes just this camera, whatever filter is in force.
Sounds
Section titled “Sounds”If a camera uses Frigate’s audio detection, its settings include Sounds: Alert or Don’t alert for alerts raised by a sound alone, such as a bark with nothing in view. Frigate doesn’t say which sound it heard, so one setting covers them all. An alert that also has an object follows that object’s setting.
Levels
Section titled “Levels”Each alert arrives at one of three levels:
| Level | What it does |
|---|---|
| Time Sensitive | Sounds, and breaks through a Focus, Do Not Disturb included. |
| Normal | Sounds, but waits for a Focus to end. |
| Silent | No sound and no banner: straight to Notification Center. |
Default means the level set by Break through Focus in Settings › Device Notification Settings: Time Sensitive when it’s on, Normal when it’s off. A camera can have its own level, and an object within it can have another. When two settings disagree, the louder one wins: a person set to Time Sensitive on a camera set to Silent still breaks through.
None of the levels is a critical alert: an iPhone on silent stays silent.
Quiet hours
Section titled “Quiet hours”Quiet hours make alerts arrive silently, in Notification Center, between two times every day, such as 11:00 PM to 6:30 AM. They’re part of a filter, so a Sleep filter can have them and Home can do without. A camera or an object you’ve set to a louder level still sounds, which is how only a person at the front door wakes me works: quiet hours on, and the front door’s person set to Time Sensitive.
Held back
Section titled “Held back”Held back lists the alerts this iPhone didn’t show you in the last 24 hours, and which setting held each one back, such as Driveway: not for Car or Garage snoozed. It’s worked out on this iPhone from the server’s alerts and your filters as they are now, so if you expected an alert and didn’t get one, this is where to look first.
Your filters on your other devices
Section titled “Your filters on your other devices”Your filters themselves follow you to your other iPhones and iPads through iCloud Sync. Synced with iCloud Which one is active, and any snoozes, stay on each device, so your iPad at home can stay on Home while your iPhone goes Away.
Each filter has an Icon, shown in Control Center, the widgets and the Cameras tab’s title, so you can tell at a glance which is in force.