Continuity, the new feature in iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite, is noble in its intent to make your Apple devices work together better. One of its key abilities is to let you answer messages or receive calls on whatever Apple device is most convenient at the time, be it your iPhone, your iPad, or your Mac.

Sounds like the future! But in the actual present, this can be a huge annoyance.

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Let’s say you have Continuity enabled on your Mac, iPad, and iPhone. A call comes in. All three devices ring at once. Or almost at once: Usually the iPhone rings first, and then the iPad and Mac start ringing five seconds later. And if you answer the call on your iPhone quickly, the other two devices will continue ringing for a few seconds because of that delay. Worse, if your Apple devices are strewn around your home, you’re suddenly surrounded by an overwhelming number of rings. It’s the same with incoming iMessages. One notification becomes two, or three, or more.

If you’re sick of this, here’s how to turn it off.

Stop phone calls from forwarding

For phone calls, on your iPhone go to Settings → FaceTime, and then toggle iPhone Cellular Calls to off. This will prevent your incoming calls from forwarding to your other devices. Continuity works by linking any hardware that you are logged in to using your Apple ID — the login/password you use to verify your iCloud and App Store accounts. So any iOS device or any Mac that you have set up with the same Apple ID will be able to pick up calls from your iPhone. Switching this setting in FaceTime to off will break this connection for phone calls.

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You can easily flip this setting on and off depending on your connectivity needs. For example, you may want your calls forwarded to your other Apple devices during business hours, but not on weekends.

Stop iMessages from forwarding to your iPad

Assuming you want iMessages to appear on your phone, you can prevent them from forwarding to your other devices.

If you don’t want iMessages to show up on your iPad at all, pick up your iPad and go to Settings → Messages and switch off iMessage. If you still want messages sent to your iPad but don’t want to be interrupted with an audible ping, go to Settings → Notifications → Messages and switch the Notification Sound to None. And if you still want to send and receive iMessages from your iPad, but you don’t want to hear a sound or see a pop-up when each new one arrives, then from that same screen, switch off Allow Notifications.

Stop iMessages from forwarding to your Mac

On a Mac, if you don’t want iMessages to show up at all, then open Messages, go to Preferences, click on Accounts, and then under Apple ID uncheck Enable this account. This means you won’t be able to send, receive, read or interact with iMessages in any way from your Mac.

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A gentler approach: Just turn off all the notifications, so you can still respond if you have to but you won’t be interrupted by pings and pop-ups. To silence these incoming message alerts, go to System Preferences → Notifications → Messages; then you can adjust the Messages alert style to None. To just switch off sounds: On that same screen, uncheck Play sound for notifications and choose the Message alert style setting you want: banners or alerts.

[Hat-tip for the phone call settings: Finer Things]

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