• After 15+ years, we've made a big change: Android Forums is now Early Bird Club. Learn more here.

Help How to MUTE some contacts

Z

Zilliman

Newbie
I have been struggling with this problem, and I think it should be a straight forward operation, but unfortunately it is not. After all this is Google code we are talking about.

I have a list of contacts all stored in my google account. I believe it is called "Google Contacts".

I would like to MUTE some selected contacts, which means when they call me, or when they SMS me, the phone remains silent. No notifications, no popups, no ringtones, no buzzing, nothing at all.

This has proven an impossible task. There are some ways to modify the ringtone for a specific contact, but it does not allow you to "mute" it, and it does not cover notifications, buzzing etc.

I have tried the phone's default messaging app, and the Google messenger app. Both have the same bug. After you receive an SMS message from a contact you wish to "mute" you can then select "people and options" and turn notifications off. But if you are actually viewing the messages and another message arrives, the phone will beep!! Also, if you delete the messages, then it forgets that you had switched notifications off for this contact, and it starts beeping again.

All this is really terrible. The notifications should be handled at the contact list level, regardless which app handles the incoming message or incoming phone call. But when we go to Google Contacts and try to modify the ringtone, there is no option for "mute" and no option for "notification" in general. In addition this "ringtone" option only appears on the phone, not on the web interface.

If anyone knows a way to deal with this problem please let me know.

Many thanks
 
What you want to do can only be handled at the carrier level AFIK,
that can get expensive.

For SMS, I just hit 'blacklist' and I have not ever once, had any of those contacts bother me again. This is with the Textra app. Textra SMS - Android Apps on Google Play

As for ringing? go into Contacts and set their ringer for 'silent', and the action for whatever you want, 'reject', 'ignore', 'voicemail'....
 
Thanks for your reply.

I do not want to eliminate the phone calls or the SMS, I just want them to be muted. I do not want to hear buzzing, or ringing when one of these contacts sends a message, but I still want to see the message if I open it.

My Contacts does not offer me the choice of a "silent" ringtone.
 
Make your own silent ringtone: record some silence, or use audio editing software on a computer to set the output level of a recording to zero. Then copy that to the phone and use it as a silent tone.
 
in 'SMS', just set it to "No notifications" on that one contact....
Textra has a switch for that. be sure to check to remove the 'vibrate' option, it is ON by default.

every SMS contact has its' own default settings.... you can change any of them. if you don't specify, it uses the default SMS settings.
 
1) In the SMS app, I can "mute" a conversation and that works. However, if I delete the conversation, then the SMS app "forgets" that this contact had been muted! And when the next message arrives it beeps again. And it is all over again.

2) I knew the trick of recording a silent ringtone, maybe even download one, I was hoping that Android had some better way of customising notifications per contact
 
Ideally I would like to mute all contacts, save a few, during non business hours. I need to allow Text notifications family and close associates to come through while muting others during the off hours-particularly during sleep hours.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom