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

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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.

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.

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

  3. Does this silence.m4r automatically silence all calls coming in? Or can I select it only for certain callers? Thank you for your help.
    Reply ↓
  4. Well when you select this as the default ringtone it will silence all calls EXCEPT those contacts you have assigned a specific ringtone instead leaving as default
    Reply ↓
  6. In a place far away, in a different universe, this setting would automatically trigger after hours so I wouldn’t have to make the change every single night.
    But QED can’t be greedy.

    Tried asking Sprint and they haven’t a clue about their new iPhone equipment. First they said it was possible and gave me an incorrect solution, then they punted.
    THANKS MUCH!

    Reply ↓
  7. What a clever “work-around.” Having said that, isn’t it curious that iPhone hasn’t “fixed” this glaring deficiency?
    Reply ↓
  8. Thank you, Thank you,Thank you! So many websites tell you different ways to make a silent ringtone…but not all of us are that tech savvy! So again….Thank you!
    Reply ↓
  12. Many many thanks – this will save the day – I have a number of contacts who seem totally unaware that 02:00 is not the time for a casual chat – “silence” keeps them at bay
    Reply ↓
  13. This is a terrific solution, but am I missing something? Why make the silent ringtone one’s default and then assign special ringtones to all of the contacts whose calls one does want to accept? It seems to me it would be far simpler to leave all one’s ringtones “as is” and just assign the silent ringtone to the much smaller group of contacts whose incoming calls one wants sent directly to voice mail. Or like I said, is there something I don’t understand that makes that not possible?
    Reply ↓
    • Joe your approach is probably best for your circumstances. Personally, I only assigned the silent ringtone to ALL contacts when I was trying to take a Sunday nap and only be interrupted by certain people. Most of the time it’s the other way around.
      Reply ↓
  14. I made a phone contact called Spam and just gave it the silent ringtone. Now whenever I get a spam call I add it to my spam contact in the address book and hear from them no more. Thanks for the quiet.
    Reply ↓
  16. Just another heartfelt thank-you for this excellent solution! My British carrier, O2, don’t have a clue about nuisance calls, and only offer to change my phone number, which really couldn’t be more inconvenient! Have a great Christmas.
    Reply ↓
  17. Nice write-up. I needed to set a few alarms that will only vibrate, but there’s no such option in the settings section. I followed your instructions, set up a few test alarms and the vibration worked without any sound played!! THANK YOU!!
    Reply ↓

  21. Pingback: Silent Ring Tone | Jack Of All Trades

  22. Any similar tips to block text messages (from coming in at all, and not just silence)? Such a simple requirement has yet no app (except jailbreak, which I don’t want to)
    Reply ↓
  23. Can I put this on my iPhone and tell it to silence certain calls I recieve, not all of them? I don’t want my default to be silent, then I go back and change my other 200 contacts that I do want to hear from to ring. I just have four numbers I’d like to be silent, so can I go to those four individual numbers and make THEIR default ringtone silent, not ALL of my contacts?
    Reply ↓
  25. This is a great concept, however if your using an iphone for business use and you want to do this for incoming emails. So for only a emails coming in I want to be alerted…all other emails I want silent…does every email that I could potentially get have to be in my contacts then?
    Reply ↓
  26. My silence/ringer switch recently broke, and I couldn’t believe that Apple hadn’t put in a “none” option for the ringtone – but this was perfect! It’s a little bit of a hassle to keep changing settings, but I would rather do that than spend $100 fixing the stupid thing. Thanks so much for the detailed tutorial!
    Reply ↓
  29. i’ve been getting a spam caller in the middle of the night for over a week. bought a call blocking app on iTunes & that turned out to be another scam!! your ringtone saved the day!!
    Reply ↓
  30. what if some of your contacts are already assigned custom ringtones. will they go to silence once you set the default to silent or will you have to change all contacts with custom tones to default and just enable the ones you want to ring?
    Reply ↓
  31. I have a contact called “Do not answer” that is for all of the telemarketers who repeatedly call me. I just made that ringtone be “Silence”, so I don’t get distracted. AWESOME!
    Reply ↓
  35. Apple should definitely fix this, because how ever simple this “fix” is, this is not a solution. yes it silences the unwanted callers, but still all the notifications, text messages, emails, etc all make noise.

    I work nights, so sleep in later than most people, but have parents who are old. I would like to be able to get my night’s rest, but still be reachable in case of a heart attack or something…

    (even the new mail sound wakes me up)

    Reply ↓

  37. Pingback: Silence your iPhone at night, but still let certain people ring through. (Like Blackberry exceptions.) « ScottWorld Blog: My Rants and Raves

  39. Thank you so much for this solution!! I have never used ringtones and use vibrate for sound and then then silent when I don’t want anyone bothering me. I was wondering how I could cut this ringtone so I can make a shorter one for text messages. Thank you in advance for letting me know!! I tried in iTunes but it didn’t give me the option (probably because of the file type).
    Reply ↓
  41. They don’t want you to have the ability to block calls, or silence them, because then you could do it to their “spam” automated/moron callers.
    Reply ↓

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