«
»

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

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

  1. Download the “Silence” ringtone here: silence.m4r
  2. Copy this file into the Ringtones section of your iTunes. (Click to enlarge.)

    adding_ringtone_to_itunes
  3. Sync your iPhone with iTunes to load the ringtone.
  4. On your iPhone, change your ringtone to “Silence” (under Settings -> Sounds -> Ringtone). You’ll no longer hear your phone calls.

    2_iphone_silence_ringtone
  5. 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

    3_iphone_important_caller 4_iphone_audible_ringtone

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

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 6th, 2009 at 9:33 pm and is filed under Apple, Communication, Getting Things Done, How To, Mac, Main, Tech, Tips, iPhone. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

19 Responses to “iPhone tip: Use a Silent Ringtone to Screen Calls in Your Sleep”

  1. Robert Merrill Says:
    August 6th, 2009 at 11:03 pm
    Can you post an mp3 version of that ringtone? :)
  2. Richard K Miller Says:
    August 6th, 2009 at 11:15 pm
    Robert, good idea. Here’s a silent MP3: silent.mp3
  3. Heather Says:
    August 7th, 2009 at 9:05 am
    I love have you used “The Wife” as the contact you’d want to hear. Too funny.
  4. Aaron Doty Says:
    August 7th, 2009 at 4:59 pm
    Thanks Richard, great tip and thanks for the ringtone!!!
  5. Aaron Toponce Says:
    August 19th, 2009 at 7:45 am
    I’ve thought about this from time-to-time. I’ve even just debating turning off the phone when I sleep. Problem I keep encountering in my head, is what if it’s an emergency? The one time I decide to turn off my phone, is the one time my dad calls telling me mom is in the hospital with moments to live. Maybe I’m overly paranoid.
  6. Jared Says:
    August 20th, 2009 at 5:56 am
    Richard, next time I see you, I’m checking to see if I’ve been relegated to one of your “silent” callers!
  7. A Girl Says:
    August 20th, 2009 at 5:58 am
    Good thing you didn’t silence “The Wife”!
  8. Richard K Miller Says:
    August 20th, 2009 at 11:22 pm
    @Jared: Haha, check away! You’ll be in good shape.

    @Aaron: Yes, it’d almost nice if some callers could choose to flag the call as urgent.

  9. Stephen C. Says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 11:12 am
    Hey Richard thanks for the silent.m4r. It works perfect! Any suggestions on how to make my own? I used a mp3 splitter and split a song into a 20second length then went into DOS and renamed the test.mp3 to test.m4r and iTunes won’t let me drag it over. It doesn’t give me an error, it just ignores me.
    ~Stephen
  10. toby Says:
    November 23rd, 2009 at 6:42 pm
    wow, I am a phone and computer dummy and I was able to do this with your instruction, thanks , thanks no more ring on for trouble calls!
  11. Renee K. Says:
    November 27th, 2009 at 2:11 pm
    Thank you so much, Richard! This is exactly what I’ve been looking for. Now I can successfully ignore the callers that have been harassing me lately!
  12. S. Says:
    December 2nd, 2009 at 4:41 pm
    Great!! The missing and most important ringtone has been found. Thank you!
  13. chris Says:
    December 21st, 2009 at 9:54 am
    Hi, this looks just what I am looking for but when I try to download it i get this message ’safari can not download this file” Can you help me with this problem too?

    Thanks in advance

  14. Richard K Miller Says:
    December 22nd, 2009 at 11:37 am
    Chris, this works okay for me in Safari. Does it work for you in any other browsers?
  15. Eddiebhai! Says:
    January 18th, 2010 at 10:30 am
    Wow! Richard… not to take the credit away from you, but I thought of this exact solution yesterday and discussed with my wife. I was pretty excited at my ‘originality’ and then when I searched the web this morning, I found your post :(

    You got to it before I did… I must say… so Kudos! :)

  16. Haroon Says:
    January 20th, 2010 at 7:57 am
    I get loads and loads of fans as well as crazies calling me at all hours of the night. This is particularly useful to me.

    Thanks

    Haroon

  17. Sue Says:
    January 21st, 2010 at 11:41 pm
    Thank you, thank you, thank you!
    I’ve been trying to do this for hours following other websites instructions about how to create a silent ringtone using itunes and similar post, but could not manage to convert a file to a ringtone properly following their instructions. With your post, it was not only very easy to follow but you ere kind enough to create a “Silence” ringtone for us. THANK YOU SO MUCH, YOU’RE A STAR!!!!
  18. Laurie Says:
    January 22nd, 2010 at 10:56 am
    How do I do this if I haven’t purchased any ringtones yet? I don’t see a ‘Ringtone’ section on my iTunes, and when I add the mp3 to iTunes and right click to ‘create ringtone’ it tells me I can only create ringtones from stuff I buy off of iTunes. Help!
  19. Laurie Says:
    January 22nd, 2010 at 11:05 am
    Nevermind, I tried downloading the m4r and it worked! THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!

Leave a Reply