Peter's private space
to develop skills, share ideas and experience, etc

Phone, be silent!

Due to COVID, I’m working from home for about a year (and will remain home for another 8 months as it seems). I didn’t expect I must do it so long, and during this time a lot of things changed. For example, I don’t have the 2 hours commuting (walk, train, metro) every day. I tried to adjust to the new situation as much as I can, picking up new habits, moving sleeping schedule and so on.
Because I’m always at home and I receive a lot of messages, my phone was beeping continuously. Telegram (sonar sound), Facebook Messenger (the old MSN sound), Viber (tweeting birds), e-mails (Diablo 2 portal enter), SMSes, calls, etc, and there’s no feature to mute the phone for a set timeframe between two messages. My daughter (21 months old now) noticed them too: when somebody pinged me on Viber, she said “tweet-tweet, daddy”, for every other noises “oh, oh! Daddy!”. Their nerves are sensible for such things and I also wanted some peace, not to be distracted when I play with her or working on something. I know, I can turn on the do not disturb mode but then my phone vibrates for every notification and everything silenced, not only the chat platforms. So I did the followings:
in the system settings - Apps & notifications - Notifications I searched for those apps I wanted to be silent and one by one set the notification sound for “None”. However, there was one rebel, a tricky. Facebook Messenger.
Because if the “None” is placed for sound, it used the one what is configured in the application. When I checked if it’s possible to choose “None” there, I was surprised I couldn’t. Either I turn off everything and then I really don’t get anything, or I use something what isn’t disturbing. No, I want to mute that while having the sliding alert from the notification bar and displaying the message on the lock screen. I had an idea: if I create an empty “sound” file (for example nothing.ogg) I might be able to set that and then nothing is played. But it didn’t work; empty, 0 byte file cannot be chosen for such a purpose. Next idea: 1 sec long silence. There are a lot of such videos (?) on YouTube. Downloaded one with NewPipe, without the visual experience, set it and voilà, success. No more sound while having the messages on the lock screen and in the top bar.
Now, after a week I find it very good. No more beeps, distractions, annoyances (I want to keep the touch with others, but I don’t necessarily need alerts for messages). Only the calls, SMSes and e-mails aren’t muted.

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