Silencing an Android phone with exceptions for calls and messages from certain contacts
I was searching for a way to silence my Android phone (calls and
message notifications) during the night but with exceptions for a few contacts. However, the apps I found usually asked for a lot of permissions, or used undocumented features of the operating system that could break with any future update.
I found a solution to achieve this using two free apps that seem to ask for minimal permissions, that is, you can be sure they don't access parts of your system they shouldn't.
The main idea is to use a silent mp3 as your general ringtone and message notification tone during the night instead of turning the volume down. To make calls from specific contacts still go through, simply specify a special ringtone for those contacts. (Open the contact and change "Ringtone" in the "Information" section from "Default" to something else.)
You can download a silent mp3 file from here. Copy it into /Media/audio/alarms, /Media/audio/notifications and /Media/audio/ringtones on the SD card of your phone to make it available as a ringtone and notification tone. (You may need to create these directories if they don't exist already.)
You also need to add special notification tones to messages coming from specific contacts if you want to be alerted to them during the night. I used the SMS Popup app to do this. It has many nice features, but I disabled most of them, and used the so-called "contact notifications" only which you can set up in Notifications -> Contacts Notifications -> Add. (Note that the notifications played by SMS Popup are in addition to the ones by the system. It is generally advised that you turn the default alert off when using SMS Popup, but if you did, you wouldn't be able to turn the default alert silent during the night using this set-up.)
The only thing that remains to do is to change the ringtone and the notification tone to the silent mp3 file in the evening, and back to your usual tone in the morning. Quick Profiles can make this very easy if you set up your profiles in the following way (I also included a profile to use when you don't want your phone to ring at all -- maybe at the theatre).
Basically, you can configure your "Normal (Day)" profile to set everything back to normal after either the "Night" profile or the "Silent" profile.
You can also make Quick Profiles manage your alert volume, or you can untick "Alarm in silent mode" on the settings page for alarms to make sure that they don't sound in the theatre, but still wake you up if the profile is set to "Night."
Hope you'll find this post useful!
message notifications) during the night but with exceptions for a few contacts. However, the apps I found usually asked for a lot of permissions, or used undocumented features of the operating system that could break with any future update.
I found a solution to achieve this using two free apps that seem to ask for minimal permissions, that is, you can be sure they don't access parts of your system they shouldn't.
The main idea is to use a silent mp3 as your general ringtone and message notification tone during the night instead of turning the volume down. To make calls from specific contacts still go through, simply specify a special ringtone for those contacts. (Open the contact and change "Ringtone" in the "Information" section from "Default" to something else.)
You can download a silent mp3 file from here. Copy it into /Media/audio/alarms, /Media/audio/notifications and /Media/audio/ringtones on the SD card of your phone to make it available as a ringtone and notification tone. (You may need to create these directories if they don't exist already.)
You also need to add special notification tones to messages coming from specific contacts if you want to be alerted to them during the night. I used the SMS Popup app to do this. It has many nice features, but I disabled most of them, and used the so-called "contact notifications" only which you can set up in Notifications -> Contacts Notifications -> Add. (Note that the notifications played by SMS Popup are in addition to the ones by the system. It is generally advised that you turn the default alert off when using SMS Popup, but if you did, you wouldn't be able to turn the default alert silent during the night using this set-up.)
The only thing that remains to do is to change the ringtone and the notification tone to the silent mp3 file in the evening, and back to your usual tone in the morning. Quick Profiles can make this very easy if you set up your profiles in the following way (I also included a profile to use when you don't want your phone to ring at all -- maybe at the theatre).
| PROFILE: | Night | Silent | Normal (Day) |
| Ringer mode: | Ring | Silent | Ring & Vibrate |
| Media volume: | no change | 0% | 50% |
| Change ringtone: | to Silent.mp3 | no change | to your usual |
| Change notification sound: | to Silent.mp3 | no change | to your usual |
Basically, you can configure your "Normal (Day)" profile to set everything back to normal after either the "Night" profile or the "Silent" profile.
You can also make Quick Profiles manage your alert volume, or you can untick "Alarm in silent mode" on the settings page for alarms to make sure that they don't sound in the theatre, but still wake you up if the profile is set to "Night."
Hope you'll find this post useful!