Set Up 'Emergency Bypass' for Specific IT Alert Contacts

Why Silent Mode Is Dangerous for On-Call Engineers

If you carry a pager rotation, a phone set to Silent or Do Not Disturb is a liability. PagerDuty, Opsgenie, and VictorOps all rely on push notifications and phone calls to wake you up when a service goes down, but iOS and Android both suppress those calls by default the moment Do Not Disturb is active. The fix isn't to leave your phone at full volume all night — it's to configure an exception list so that only your incident-management contacts and a handful of VIPs can break through the silence, while every other notification stays muted.

Both major mobile platforms call this feature Emergency Bypass (iOS) or a priority/starred contacts exception (Android). Once it's configured correctly, a routine group chat notification stays silent at 2 AM, but a PagerDuty phone call or SMS from your incident commander rings at full volume even with the phone face-down and muted.

Setting Up Emergency Bypass on iOS

Emergency Bypass is a per-contact setting layered on top of Focus/Do Not Disturb. You configure it once per contact, and it persists across every Focus mode unless you scope it.

1. Open the Contacts app and select the person you need to always hear from (your on-call lead, your manager, or a dedicated "PagerDuty" contact card if calls come from a fixed number).
2. Tap Edit in the top-right corner.
3. Tap Ringtone.
4. Toggle Emergency Bypass to on.
5. Repeat the same steps under Text Tone if you also want their SMS messages to bypass Silent/DND.
6. Tap Done to save the contact.

Emergency Bypass forces the call or text to play its sound and vibration even when Ring/Silent is set to silent and even when a Focus mode is active, as long as that Focus mode is configured to allow it (see below).

Scoping Emergency Bypass to a Specific Focus

By default, Emergency Bypass ignores whatever Focus filtering you've set up unless you explicitly restrict it. To make sure only your on-call contacts ring during a "Sleep" or "Work" Focus:

1. Go to Settings > Focus and select the Focus you use overnight (e.g. Sleep).
2. Tap People, then Add, and add your on-call escalation contacts individually.
3. Set Allowed Notifications to Silence Notifications from Others (or the equivalent "Only allow notifications from the people and apps you choose" option depending on iOS version).
4. Under the same Focus screen, tap Apps and add PagerDuty (or your alerting app) with Time Sensitive Notifications allowed.

Setting Up the Equivalent on Android

Android's Do Not Disturb has a built-in priority exception list that behaves similarly, though the exact menu wording varies slightly by manufacturer (Samsung, Pixel, OnePlus).

1. Open Settings > Sound & vibration > Do Not Disturb (on Pixel/stock Android) or Settings > Notifications > Do Not Disturb on Samsung One UI.
2. Tap People, then Calls.
3. Set it to Starred contacts only or Only contacts, depending on how granular you want to be.
4. If you chose "Starred contacts," open the Contacts app, open the on-call contact, and tap the star icon to mark them as a favorite.
5. Back in Do Not Disturb settings, tap Apps and add PagerDuty, Opsgenie, or your alerting app so its notifications aren't suppressed.
6. Optionally enable Repeat callers, which automatically lets a call through if the same number calls twice within 15 minutes — useful when an alerting system auto-escalates with repeated calls.

Configuring the Alerting App Itself

The contact-level bypass only affects native phone calls and SMS. For push-based alerts, configure the app:

• PagerDuty (iOS): In the app, go to Settings > Notification Settings and enable Critical Alerts. iOS will prompt you to grant a special permission the first time — critical alerts are the only notification type on iOS that can play sound even in Silent mode and total Do Not Disturb, bypassing the mute switch entirely.
• PagerDuty (Android): Open the app's notification channel in Settings > Apps > PagerDuty > Notifications and set the incident channel's importance to Urgent, then enable Override Do Not Disturb for that channel if your Android build exposes it.
• Opsgenie: Uses a similar dedicated high-priority notification channel; check Settings > Notification Preferences inside the app.

Testing Before You Actually Need It

Don't wait for a real 3 AM outage to find out your configuration is wrong.

1. Turn on Silent mode (or your overnight Focus) manually.
2. Trigger a low-priority incident in PagerDuty's test/sandbox environment, or have a colleague call your on-call number.
3. Confirm the phone rings audibly and the notification is visible on the lock screen.
4. Send a routine, non-escalation Slack notification and confirm it stays silent.