Pointless Computer Tricks: Silent Ringtone

      I have a cellphone, as I suspect many of you do. I receive calls from various undesirables (collectively referred to as ‘telemarketers’), again as I suspect many of you do. I decided to do something to minimize that.

      My particular phone number has been in use for approximately 40 years (it used to be a land line number). So a moderately large number of companies (and people) know about it. Many of those companies are making (semi) legitimate calls to people that used to be found at this number. Plus all the other junk that ignores the ‘Do Not Call’ list.

      So what I did was create a contact on my phone, named ‘A Telemarketer’. ‘A’ so it would be near the top of the list, telemarketer because that’s what it is (more or less). Whenever I get a new call from some telemarketer I don’t want to talk to again, I add them to the list.

      The trick comes in assigning the ‘A Telemarketer’ contact a special ringtone. The exact steps will vary for phone type, but in general they are the same. You grab any ringtone that works on your phone, copy it into an editor, delete all the audio, then save it again. The resulting file has no actual sound, but has the formatting of a ringtone. Copy it back to your phone and assign it to your contact. When they call you, the phone will dutifully play the ringtone. Yet no sound comes out, as there is none for it to play.

Steps for Android:
      I have an Android phone, so it uses .ogg files for ringtone. I copied one of the ringtones off the phone and onto the computer. Once there, I renamed it (empty_ringtone) and opened it in Audacity. Then select (click and drag) all the sound (wavy lines in middle of screen). Delete and export (picking ‘Ogg’). Assign metadata as desired. Copy new ’empty’ ringtone back to phone and assign to contacts you don’t want to ‘ring’ you again.

      Like I said, I use this for ‘telemarketers’, but it could be used for other purposes. Maybe you only want people you know to ring your phone: assign the default to your silent ringtone, and then assign actual people a ‘real’ ringtone. Could be used for individuals or groups.

      I haven’t been using this trick for that long, might not be worth it long term. But so far it’s been pretty useful. One day I received two calls while I was helping a client. Didn’t know about it until I noticed the missed calls later, as the ringtone made no noise (or vibrations).

Truly Pointless:
      What makes this a particularly pointless trick is that after having done this I realized the phone had a ‘None’ ringtone built in. Oh well, was still a fun exercise.

Click here for a copy of the empty_ringtone I made, should it be of use to you…