So you’re running the new iOS 8 on your iPhone. You’ve also got an iPad and an iPod touch, plus a Mac installed with Yosemite. You like the fact that each device can communicate – especially the fact you can let your iPhone ring through to other devices. Or at least, you liked it. Until the various ringtones going off on each device started to drive you crazy.
Luckily there are ways to stop such incessant device shaking and bleeping. If you want to stop your Apple devices from forwarding calls entirely, simply tap ‘Settings’ on the phone, then ‘FaceTime’ and flick the iPhone Cellular Calls to ‘off’. Should you change your mind later you can always enable it again in the same way.
Just want to disable the capability on one specific device? Simple. In order to prevent a call being passed to another iOS device, pick the device up, tap ‘Settings’ > ‘FaceTime’ and disable the switch next to the iPhone Cellular Calls entry. This will prevent that device from receiving calls picked up by your iPhone (as well as stopping you from making calls from that device via your phone).
Stopping call sharing is just as straightforward on Apple’s desktop devices. On the Mac, launch FaceTime and open the preferences. In the ‘Settings’ tab, disable the iPhone Cellular Calls option. As with an iOS device, this will prevent your Mac from making and receiving calls.
So how about Text Message Forwarding? It’s annoying when SMS messages get shunted from phone to laptop too right? This is the feature on iOS 8.1 that lets text messages received on your iPhone be passed to another Apple device. This particular feature is more configurable than iPhone call forwarding. To configure it, tap ‘Settings’ on your iPhone and then hit ‘Messages’. Next, tap the Text Message Forwarding icon and you should be able to see a list of devices linked to your Apple ID. Every device capable of receiving forwarded messages will be listed here. Simply enable the switch next to each device that you want to share SMS messages with – and disable those you do not.
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