iPhone tip: Use a Silent Ringtone to Screen Calls in Your Sleep

Posted on August 6, 2009 by Richard K Miller

Have you ever wished your iPhone would ring only when certain people call? Here’s how to do it:

Download the “Silence” ringtone here: silence.m4r
Copy this file into the Ringtones section of your iTunes. (Click to enlarge.)
Sync your iPhone with iTunes to load the ringtone.
On your iPhone, change your ringtone to “Silence” (under Settings -> Sounds -> Ringtone). You’ll no longer hear your phone calls.
For each person whose calls you still want to hear, change his or her Custom Ringtone to something audible: Click the name in your contact list, choose Ringtone, then choose something besides Default

Now you can screen calls in your sleep. Because Sunday afternoons are for napping.

UPDATE (Apr 14, 2011): I haven’t used it, but MrNumber.com appears to be an interesting service for identifying phone numbers belonging to telemarketers and blocking them.

260 thoughts on “iPhone tip: Use a Silent Ringtone to Screen Calls in Your Sleep”

Netgyrl on March 7, 2012 at 11:08 am said:

Thank you!! unknown old lady from another country keeps calling me at 5am, no matter what I say she just says “hello?” and then eventually hangs ups and calls back. Now she can just talk to my vm while I slumber on. Bless you!!

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Phil on March 21, 2012 at 2:46 pm said:

Hot Dang. I was looking all over for just this thing. I created a contact called “DNA” (Do Not Answer). And assigned it this ringtone. Telemarketers and other annoyances now go to VM for screening. Thanks again.

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Phil on March 21, 2012 at 3:36 pm said:

I spoke too soon. The ringtone is grey’d out in iTunes and won’t sync with my new iPhone 4.

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- metoo on May 13, 2012 at 12:44 pm said:
  
  i second that
  
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Rockhead on March 27, 2012 at 1:24 am said:

Does the “silent” default ringtone this also silence incoming SMS notifications, or is that just a matter of another keystroke?

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Christopher Price on March 31, 2012 at 3:54 pm said:

Thank you, Richard.

For others, make sure you have iTunes set to sync “tones” for your device.

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L on March 31, 2012 at 5:06 pm said:

It seems to me that for as sophisticated as the iPhone is that there would be an easier way to just assign a silent ringtone to a few particular contacts insteacd of what is suggested above. Am I missing something here? My old style phone actually just had a ringtone that was “Silent” and easy to just assign it to whom I wanted.

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Travis on April 4, 2012 at 3:44 pm said:

Too bad the iPhone doesn’t come with this “ringtone” pre-installed.

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Judy Hall on April 6, 2012 at 2:26 am said:

I do not have a ringtones section in my Itunes??? Great idea, would like to do it… help please!!

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- Steve on April 9, 2012 at 6:38 am said:
  
  Make sure “Tones” are set-up to be seen by going to iTunes>Preferences…>General. There you will see all the features (Movies, TV Shows, Podcasts,…, Tones, …) that can be displayed when checked.
  
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- A name on May 6, 2012 at 5:49 pm said:
  
  I didn’t have a ring tones section either until I dragged the .m4r file onto iTunes. After I did that I was able to copy the file to my iPhone 3GS.
  
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Judy Hall on April 6, 2012 at 3:34 am said:

OK, worked out how to do that, it created the folder by itself…… sorry never have done that……… works beautifully, thanks for the very useful tip……

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Diane on April 6, 2012 at 1:18 pm said:

I have been trying to figure out how to silence unknown callers or to set a “none” ringtone to a contact, just like you can select “none” for text, and still have my phone on for wanted calls. Honestly I’m surprised Apple didn’t already provide this. I have talked to a few people at the Apple stores and even sent a couple suggestions to Apple online and no one ever responded to my suggestions and the people I talked to were not even aware that this was possible. Out of the blue I decided to search for “silent ringtone” and voila, your site appeared. Thank you so much!

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Brenda on April 16, 2012 at 8:43 am said:

I was using this ringtone happily on my iphone 3gs, but now it has died.

I’m using my old LG shine cu7200 for a while until I decide on a new carrier. It seems to want an mp3 format. I tried texting the ringtone from my computer, but it wants to save the data as a contact.

Next I will try a microSD card. ANy idea if this m4r will work?

Thanks so much!

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Joe Blow on April 21, 2012 at 12:28 pm said:

Thanks, silent ringtones on iTunes are .99, really thanks a lot.

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Grateful in Houston on April 22, 2012 at 6:53 am said:

Thank you! This was incredibly easy to implement…even for a tech newbie like me.

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john fox on May 2, 2012 at 8:37 pm said:

Thanks for this audio, a crazy guy, call me all day long to bother me, so, with this, i will know.

thanks a lot.

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walnutshoes on May 3, 2012 at 3:47 pm said:

Thanks so much to record this special “silence” ringtones, good job!

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tde on May 4, 2012 at 7:33 am said:

On my previous blackberry, you could create custom profiles so at night I could set it so that I could still hear phone calls and texts (teenagers out and about) but no audio notification of emails. During the day I could change the profile to alert for all notifications. Is there any way to do this on the iphone?

Ideally there are a few contacts that I would like to alert me 24/7, while everything else could be turned on or silenced.

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Kleanup on May 5, 2012 at 1:04 pm said:

Pretty sweet. Nice and easy the way I like things.

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Martha on May 7, 2012 at 1:08 pm said:

Thank you so much!! Telemarketing calls are starting t show up on my iPhone. I am so glad to have this ringtone!

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Keith on May 9, 2012 at 12:37 pm said:

Apple has taken the MrNumber down.

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Cath on May 14, 2012 at 7:38 pm said:

Thank you so much. Brilliantly easy.

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