We’ve all been there — you’re right in the middle of a sensitive situation and just a moment later you’re scrambling to find your ringing phone and shut it off like an ape groping for a particularly pesky nit. Alternately, I’ve missed more than my fair share of phone calls just because I forgot to turn silent mode off. Surely there must be a happy medium.
Well, of course there is. I’ve been playing with an Android app called Silence for the past few days now, and it’s been nothing short of magical for me.
The app’s unassuming name belies what it’s really capable of. Long story short, the app silences your phone (or sets it to vibrate) according to some preset event triggers — once that pre-determined amount of time has elapsed, your smartphone goes right back to its usual boisterous self. What’s more, there’s no limit to the number of events you can create, so go ahead and map out your entire week if you feel like it. Sure, it requires a bit more forethought than you might otherwise be willing to devote to a task that seems so menial, but it’s made my past week just a bit more bearable since I wasn’t coming off as a jerk for not answering my phone.
Silence isn’t new, strictly speaking, but the team behind the app just recently pushed out a 2.0 update that happens to add a slew of new goodies — think turning your mobile data connection on and off as needed and the ability to pull events from your Google Calendar. Perhaps most importantly, the new update means that notifications, media and alarm volumes can be automatically tweaked at preset times, too, so an errant text received during the middle of a funeral (I’ve been there — it’s not pleasant) doesn’t throw things off too much.
Granted, this isn’t the sort of app that everyone is going to need in their respective toolboxes, but it works like a charm. The concept is simple, the execution is smart and the price (free!) is right if you’re all right with a few ads. You can check Silence out in the Google Play Store here.