To turn the iPhone ringer off and use iPhone silent mode, all you need to do is flip a switch.
On the upper left-hand side of the iPhone is a small switch. It’s just above the volume control and below the phone's corner. This is the iPhone ringer.
To turn the iPhone ringer off and put the phone into silent mode, simply flip this switch down towards the bottom of the phone. An onscreen icon showing a bell with a line through it will appear to confirm that the ringer is off. You will also be able to see an orange dot on the switch.
Flipping the switch back up will turn the switch back on.
Ringer and Vibration Options
Beyond using this switch, there are a number of settings that give you more control over the iPhone's ringer and vibration options. To access them, tap the Settings icon on your homescreen, scroll down to Sounds and tap it. The options on this screen allow you to do the following:
- Silent - This slider controls whether your phone will vibrate the ringer is off and a call comes in. Slide it to on if you want the phone to vibrate even when the ringer is off.
- Ringer and Alerts - Lets you control the volume of your ringtones and decide whether the volume buttons just under the physical ringer switch can control volume volume or not.
- Vibrate - Controls whether the iPhone vibrates when calls come in and it's not in silent mode.
- Ringtone - Sets the default ringtone for the phone. Assigning individual ringtones to contacts overrides this setting.
- Text Tone - Sets what ringtone plays when you receive a new text message. In iOS 4.2, this can be overridden by assigning individual SMS tones to contacts.
- Other Sliders - The other sliders control whether tones sound when various events happen on the iPhone. You cannot control the tones played for these events.
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