App request - selective ring-through even when "silent"

Posted:
in iPhone edited January 2014
My gf is a doctor & a mom. Like any parent in a high-intensity career she has a need to keep her iPhone set on silent for much of the time.



She's said a number of times that as a parent she would LOVE to have a few phone numbers able to be identified as ones that would ring even when the phone is set on silent:

the ER,

child A

child B

their school....



Possible? Anyone want to give her hope? ("...You'd sell a skidzillion". And the feature would "define a difference parents would find critical" according to her.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 10
    Can't be done. Just set every number to ring silent except for those and leave the switch where it is.
  • Reply 2 of 10
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Tallest Skil View Post


    Can't be done. Just set every number to ring silent except for those and leave the switch where it is.



    Maybe it's just late and I'm not paying close enough attention. BUT, I don't see "silent" as a ring choice. Vibrate can be turned on in the general sounds pref, but it still has an associated ring tone. So what were you trying to describe?





    That also doesn't solve the need for mostly silent ring at work and normal behavior everyplace else.
  • Reply 3 of 10
    aquaticaquatic Posts: 5,602member
    I have wanted this feature in a phone, ever since I got a cell phone. I am extremely surprised it hasn't been around since they were invented.
  • Reply 4 of 10
    I would love this as well. Or further (and so less likely) I'd really like to have multiple numbers ring to one iPhone, and be able to assign different ringer settings to different numbers. This way you could have an "always gets through" number you give to only a few people, and a "likely to go to voicemail if it's not a good time" number you give to others. Or business and personal numbers.



    Actually maybe this is possible on some phones now?
  • Reply 5 of 10
    Just working with Tallest Skil idea, how about you create a "silent" ringtone to simulate silent and set each contact with a different ring tone.



    ~Record with Quicktime (cover mic so that it doesn't record anything), don't make it longer than 30 secs.

    ~Import to iTunes, convert it to AAC (right click).

    ~Locate the file and rename to m4r from m4a (right click, show in finder)

    ~Sync with iPhone.







    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Tallest Skil View Post


    Can't be done. Just set every number to ring silent except for those and leave the switch where it is.



  • Reply 6 of 10
    Except that recording a "silent" few seconds as the default ring tone doesn't solve the need to be silent at work and noisy in the rest of the real world.
  • Reply 7 of 10
    jeffdmjeffdm Posts: 12,951member
    Short of maybe some kind of hack, I don't see how it can be done in the current iOS. And I don't recommend a hack even if there is one for this. It's hard to know what the unintended consequences are.



    I think the best you can do is go to Apple's feedback page and request it, and be clear why it's needed too.
  • Reply 8 of 10
    aquaticaquatic Posts: 5,602member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by SailorPaul View Post


    Except that recording a "silent" few seconds as the default ring tone doesn't solve the need to be silent at work and noisy in the rest of the real world.



    Precisely. Would be nice to only have a few select contacts create an audible ring while at work and then once home...they are all audible again. Do any phones have this? I'm really blown away this wasn't added years or decades ago!! JeffDM makes a good point, I submitted Apple feedback.
  • Reply 9 of 10


    I find it hard to believe that this "Cant be done".  I had a NOKIA phone in 2005 that was able to do this!  You set certain contacts into groups, then you created "ring profiles"... for instance "Important people only" would be mine... and you'd set it to send all calls to vm *except* those who were in the "important people" group.  Those would ring through. 



    If Nokia could do it 7 years ago, I am confident apple can.


     


    Also... Droid has an app already that does this as well.



    My issue is... with all the additional things that phones do now (tweet, facebook, foursquare, words with friends...) I'm getting alerts like crazy... which is fine but at 1am I'd like to silence the alerts without silencing the whole phone in case of work or emergency.  And I dont want to manually turn off the alerts for each of those programs each night either. 



    There's got to be a way.  Droid does it, Nokia did it in the stone age.  Somebody make it happen!

  • Reply 10 of 10
    jeffdmjeffdm Posts: 12,951member
    kisluvkis wrote: »
    I find it hard to believe that this "Cant be done".  I had a NOKIA phone in 2005 that was able to do this!  You set certain contacts into groups, then you created "ring profiles"... for instance "Important people only" would be mine... and you'd set it to send all calls to vm *except* those who were in the "important people" group.  Those would ring through. 


    If Nokia could do it 7 years ago, I am confident apple can.

    Also... Droid has an app already that does this as well.


    My issue is... with all the additional things that phones do now (tweet, facebook, foursquare, words with friends...) I'm getting alerts like crazy... which is fine but at 1am I'd like to silence the alerts without silencing the whole phone in case of work or emergency.  And I dont want to manually turn off the alerts for each of those programs each night either. 


    There's got to be a way.  Droid does it, Nokia did it in the stone age.  Somebody make it happen!

    Why resurrect a two year old thread?

    Of course it CAN be done, you missed the conditionals mentioned in the thread. But Apple didn't add that feature yet, without that, the user would have a hard time adding a feature to a built-in app that didn't have it.

    It's been announced for iOS 6.
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