iPhone hardware technical question (disable Silent Mode switch? use Device Profile?)
I have a nagging technical issue concerning iPhones (and, I assume, iPads), specifically with the Silent Mode/Do Not Disturb switch above the Volume buttons on the left side of iPhones.
This is a problem I've been having for a while now that is both ridiculously trivial and insanely annoying, and one for which, so far, I've not had any luck finding any fixes. I've had lots of problems with accidentally, inadvertently switching into Silent/Do-Not-Disturb mode without intending to, and aside from a tiny little HUD alert that disappears after a few seconds, there's really nothing that lets me know when I've done this. When this happens, I suddenly stop getting alert sounds when I have new messages, whether it's “Messages”, or Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, or Signal, etc. (I also stop hearing various other sounds, but for purposes of this post, I only care about the message notification sounds) I don’t get a lot of incoming phone calls most of the time, but I have occasionally missed some due to my phone never having rung, even when I was sitting right next to it, which I am going to also just chalk up to being another symptom of this switch having been engaged by accident.
I chatted with an agent with Apple Support, and she was very friendly and tried to be helpful, but as I am basically going to define this as a hardware design flaw, there wasn’t a lot she could really suggest. She had me verify what certain settings were in Settings > Sounds & Haptics and Do Not Disturb, but all of my sound and volume settings were exactly what I wanted them to be and what I expected them to be.
What I was hoping the Apple Support person I chatted with could help me do, and now what I’m hoping someone reading this post can help me do, is just some kind of down-and-dirty hack (for example, installing a simple device profile) that would just disable the Silent Mode/Do-Not-Disturb switch on the side of the phone entirely. There are already 55 other ways to turn it on and off without using the physical switch, either in iOS or using Siri (and probably others I don’t know about), but I personally just do not have a lifestyle where I even NEED to have an affirmatively activated Do-Not-Disturb mode at all, let alone a need to toggle between depending on what I’m doing. I just want to make it STOP getting switched into Do Not Disturb, ever.
I have iMazing, which has an included Profile Editor for creating and installing your own device profiles (not only for iOS but also tvOS and macOS) but I haven't been able to find any templates or categories that appear to support disabling buttons and switches. I haven't looked into Apple Configurator 2 yet, but my guess is that it probably has the same selection of features and templates and areas it lets you configure, and others it does not.
So, if anyone can think of any possible fix for this very vexing issue, I would be extremely grateful. I’m still thinking that a device profile that allows for disabling specific hardware switches or buttons, specifically the Do-Not-Disturb / Silent Mode switch, would be the ideal, easiest, cleanest method. That’s assuming it’s even possible to create/obtain a profile to do that. Or perhaps there is some app or utility that would allow me to disable the switch?
As I said at the beginning, this is very trivial but also extremely annoying. Any help would be enormously appreciated.