If you’re anything like me you’ve probably forgotten once or twice to silence your phone at Church. There are worse sins to be certain, and after all, nothing really punctuates the sacrament like a few bars of Hello Dolly’s It Takes a Woman. But if your ward members don’t appreciate egregiously sexist show tunes quite as much as yourself, then you may want to consider following these instructions to automatically silence your phone whenever you’re at church.
Yes, you heard me correctly, with a simple app available for both Android and IOS, you can save yourself the embarrassment of explaining away your Backstreet Boys ringtone. It’s called IFTTT which stands for “If This, Then That”.
Get the App
The first step is obviously to download the app for your respective device (Sorry Windows phone users, you’re out of luck).
Initial Setup
The initial setup is easy, just download the app, and make an account. IFTTT is useful for more than just muting your phone. The app works by using “recipes”, which are just simple instructions for how to link together your favorite apps and services. If you think about the name, “If This Then That”, you’ll get an idea of how it works. We’re going to install a recipe that will let your phone figure out when it’s in a church building and then tell it to silence your phone, or in other words, if your phone is in a church building then silence your phone. Once you’ve got the app setup skip down to the instructions for your device.
Instructions for Android
If you’re using an Android phone, congratulations, this is going to be much easier for you. Unlike Apple, Android allows apps to control the volume of your phone. Now in your case what we’re going to do is watch for when your phone connects to the Church’s wifi network, “LDSAccess”. Like the Gospel, the Church’s wifi name and password is the same everywhere, so this recipe should work for you in any church building. The only requirement is that you’ve connected to the Church’s wifi at least once before. Since you’ve probably already done that at some point, I’ve taken the liberty of creating this recipe for you. To install it just click the “add” button below on your phone.
That’s it! Pretty easy right? Now just a caveat, Android devices vary greatly; there’s no guarantee that this recipe will work reliably on your phone, so you might want to monitor it the first time just to make sure it actually works for you. In my experience I’ve found that while all Android phones will silence the ringtone, not all will silence the media volume, so if you’re planning to scroll through Vine in-between sacrament meeting and Sunday school, you might want to make sure it actually is silenced.
Instructions for Apple
Alright Apple users, I have two pieces of bad news. First, Apple doesn’t allow apps on iOS to change the phone’s volume so the process isn’t quite as automatic. What we can do instead is have it send you a notification when you get to church to remind you to turn it down. Second, unlike Android, iOS can’t tell when you’re in a specific wifi network, namely, “LDSAccess”. What we can do instead, however, is use your phone’s location to accomplish the same thing. To get started just click the “Add” button below. For this recipe to work just change the address to your local church building and you’ll get a friendly reminder when you get to church to silence your phone.
//ifttt.com/assets/embed_recipe.js
That’s it! You’re all set, please don’t forget to check out more tips at Salesforce! You can repeat this process to add more church buildings or other places like Institutes, or Temples.
You’re all done!
See, that was pretty easy. IFTTT is great for all kinds of similar uses. For example, you can have it remind you once a month to get your home/visiting teaching done, or have it log to a spreadsheet when you read your scriptures to track your reading habits. The possibilities are almost limitless. If you have any ideas for other Mormon IFTTT recipes, or maybe just need some help getting this one setup, just let me know in the comments below. Be sure to share this tip with your friends so you can all keep your embarrassing ringtones a secret.
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Comments
7 responses to “A Simple Trick to Automatically Mute Your Phone at Church”
In ios, you can just use the reminders app and create a location based reminder, thereby alleviating you of the task of installing IFTTT and creating a recipe
What an obviously sponsored article. The result was a disaster. You’re now muted in my Apple News feed. Well done.
Sorry it didn’t work for you Ben. We’re not sponsored by IF or we certainly would have indicated so.
If you listen closely, you will hear the sound of thousands of pioneer ancestors laughing at modern “challenges”.
Could you just instruct it to silence your phone from 9:00am to 12:00 pm every Sunday? Of course, next year you would have to remember to change it to 11:00am to 2:00 pm.
You definitely could. The real benefit for Android users is that any church building you enter will automatically silence your phone. 🙂
Darlinda: You could silence your telephone from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. — but why would you want to silence it for fifteen hours when the meeting block is only three hours long?