Android tip: Set your notification sounds to “Silent”

I really like knowing when I get a new e-mail or calendar entry on my phone, but I get annoyed when my phone makes too much noise with notifications.

My preferred setup is to enable notifications, but to set the notification ringtone to “silent” for most things.

You can set the default notification ringtone to “Silent” if you want to disable all notification sounds.

1. Press Home
2. Press Menu
3. Select “Settings”
4. Select “Sound & Display”
5. Select “Notification Ringtone”
6. Choose “Silent” (the first item in the list)

If you want sounds for some notifications, but not others, then you’ll have to do this on a per-application basis.  For example, if you want everything to be silent except for GMail, then do the above to set your default ringtone to silent, then use GMail’s settings to override the notification ringtone to something else:

1. Run GMail
2. Press Menu
3. Select “Settings”
4. Select “Select Ringtone”
5. Choose the ringtone you like

You can follow a very similar procedure for SMS, Calendar, GMail, FaceBook, and any other applications that generate notifications.