A guide to silencing unknown callers, but still receive both calls and texts from contacts as vibration only.
I recently spent a bit of time figuring out how to silence telemarketing calls on my iPhone. I also always have my phone silenced (vibration only), so I wanted the following:
- Only contacts can call me.
- Calls and text can only come in as vibration notifications
Seems pretty simple, but it took some figuring out to work, partly because there's no guide I could find online. The tricky part is that I want vibration only.
How to do it:
- Turn on Do Not Disturb in the "Settings-->Do not Disturb" menu. This will turn off all notifications from calls and texts.
- In the "Settings-->Do Not Disturb-->Allow Calls From" menu, select "All Contacts". This will allow call notifications from your contacts, but still not allow unknown numbers to notify you.
- Finally, the annoying part. Go into the Contacts app, select a contact from whom you want to receive text notifications. Select "Edit", and scroll down to "Text Tone". Select "Text Tone" and toggle "Emergency Bypass" on. Repeat this will every contact from whom you want to receive text notifications. This will allow you to receive text vibration notifications even though you have "Do Not Disturb" on.
There you have it. You should now be able to receive calls and texts from your contacts as "vibration only" notifications, while not receiving notifications from telemarketers.
A few notes:
- Of course, you're going to need to toggle "Emergency Bypass" for any new phone numbers you add to your phone in the future.
- This doesn't block unknown numbers. It just silences them completely.
- I think this is the only way to do this without jailbreaking your phone, or paying for a third party app.
