How do I silence my phone by flipping it over?

What is Flip to Shhh?

Flip to Shhh is a feature available on many smartphones that allows you to quickly silence incoming calls and notifications by placing your phone face down on a flat surface. When enabled, the phone’s accelerometer and gyroscope sensors detect that the phone has been flipped over, face down, and will automatically enable Do Not Disturb or silent mode.

The Flip to Shhh feature takes advantage of motion detection sensors built into most modern smartphones. When the phone is oriented with the screen facing down, the gyroscope and accelerometer recognize this position change and trigger the phone to mute sounds and notifications. This provides a fast and convenient way to quickly silence the phone just by setting it face down on a table or other surface.

Why Use Flip to Shhh?

Flip to Shhh provides a convenient way to quickly silence your phone, without having to press any buttons or change settings. It’s great for situations like meetings, movies, sleeping, or any other time where you don’t want interruptions from your phone.

Simply flipping your phone face down on a flat surface will automatically enable Do Not Disturb mode. This silences calls, alerts, notifications, and other sounds. As soon as you pick your phone back up, Do Not Disturb mode is disabled again.

According to an article on 9to5Google, “Flip to Shhh is one of the most convenient ways to quickly enable Do Not Disturb mode on Pixel phones.” https://9to5google.com/2023/01/24/pixel-fold-flip-to-shhh/

Overall, Flip to Shhh provides a fast and easy way to mute your phone when needed, without fumbling with settings.

How to Enable Flip to Shhh

The setting to enable Flip to Shhh can vary depending on your device. Here’s how to find it on some popular models:

iPhone

On an iPhone, go to Settings > Do Not Disturb. Make sure Do Not Disturb is enabled. Then scroll down and toggle on “Silence on Flip.” This will enable Flip to Shhh so your phone mutes notifications when flipped face down (Source).

Samsung Galaxy

On a Samsung Galaxy device, open Settings and go to Advanced Features > Motions and Gestures. Tap on Easy Mute to enable it. This allows you to mute sounds by placing your hand or turning the phone face down (Source).

Google Pixel

For a Google Pixel, go to Settings > System > Gestures. Turn on “Flip to Shhh” to enable muting notifications when you flip the phone over (Source).

Customizing Flip to Shhh

Flip to Shhh allows you to customize various settings to personalize the feature to suit your needs. You can choose which notifications get silenced when you flip your phone over.

For example, you may want to silence most notifications like texts, emails, and social media, but still receive urgent calls. You can set Flip to Shhh to silence all notifications except calls from favorite contacts or repeated calls within a short time frame.

Another customization is creating a schedule for when Flip to Shhh is active. This is useful for turning on the feature only during certain times of day, like at night when you are sleeping. You can set a schedule to automatically enable and disable Flip to Shhh based on the time and day.

You can also customize the duration of time that notifications are silenced after flipping your phone. The default is usually one hour, but you may want to shorten or lengthen this duration. For example, you could set it to 30 minutes if you just need temporary quiet time, or set it longer overnight.

Taking advantage of Flip to Shhh customizations allows you to tweak the feature to best match when you want a quick and easy way to silence your phone. The settings provide flexibility to enable notifications you want while silencing disruptions during chosen schedules.

Using Flip to Shhh

Once you have Flip to Shhh enabled, using it is very straightforward. Simply flip your phone screen-side down on any surface to activate the feature and silence your phone. This will turn off the screen and stop all audible notifications immediately.

You can flip your phone over on a table, your lap, or any other flat surface. The phone does not need to be placed gently and will recognize being flipped face down even if done quickly or aggressively. As soon as the screen is facing down, Flip to Shhh engages.

There are many situations where Flip to Shhh can come in handy:

During meetings when you don’t want to be disturbed by notifications
At dinner when you want to avoid disruptions
When watching a movie so incoming calls or texts don’t interrupt

Before bedtime to enable quiet and avoid blue light disruption
In other scenarios where you want to temporarily disconnect

Simply remember to flip your phone back over when you want to re-enable sounds and screen. The phone will instantly recognize being flipped over and resume normal functioning.

Exceptions to Flip to Shhh

Although Flip to Shhh will silence most notifications when your phone is face down, there are some exceptions where sounds may still come through. This is to ensure you don’t miss anything extremely important.

By default, certain calls, alarms, and other settings will override Flip to Shhh so their notifications can still make a sound. According to Google’s Pixel phone support page, “Flip to Shhh doesn’t silence alarms, timers, calls, or media.”

You can customize which exceptions are allowed when Flip to Shhh is on. To edit exceptions, go to Settings > Sound > Do Not Disturb > Exceptions. From here you can enable or disable sound exceptions for things like alarms, media, calls from certain contacts, and reminders.

There may be times when you urgently need to hear a notification even though Flip to Shhh is enabled. You can temporarily override it by pressing the volume up button on your Pixel phone. This will allow notifications to make sounds for the next 12 hours until Flip to Shhh activates again.

Understanding the exceptions is important so you don’t miss crucial notifications when using the Flip to Shhh feature.

Troubleshooting Flip to Shhh

If Flip to Shhh is not working properly, there are a few troubleshooting steps you can try:

Check that your phone’s orientation/proximity sensor is working properly. You can test this by downloading a sensor testing app from the Play Store.
Try re-enabling Flip to Shhh in your phone’s Settings app. Sometimes toggling the setting off and back on can resolve issues.
Restart your phone. Rebooting your device can often fix problems with Flip to Shhh not responding.

If issues continue, consider recalibrating the proximity sensor on your phone. On some devices like the Pixel, you can find a sensor calibration option under Advanced Options in Settings.

As noted in this Reddit thread, proximity sensor failures are a common cause of Flip to Shhh not responding as expected: https://www.reddit.com/r/GooglePixel/comments/140dv1c/flip_to_shhh_wasnt_working_but_fixed_it/

Resetting and recalibrating the sensor can often resolve these types of issues with the feature. If problems persist after troubleshooting, you may need to contact the device manufacturer for further support.

Limitations of Flip to Shhh

While Flip to Shhh can be a useful feature to quickly silence notifications, it does have some limitations users should be aware of:

Flip to Shhh only silences notifications and does not mute incoming calls (source). If you flip your phone over while receiving a call, it will not mute the ringing. You will still hear incoming calls while Flip to Shhh is activated.

Flip to Shhh relies on the proximity sensor on the front of the phone in order to detect when the phone is placed face down. If you have a phone case that blocks or covers this sensor, Flip to Shhh may not work properly (source). The feature needs direct access to the proximity sensor to function.

Because Flip to Shhh activates whenever the proximity sensor is covered, it can sometimes be triggered accidentally if something is placed over the front of the phone. Users have reported Flip to Shhh unintentionally activating when their phone is in a bag or pocket (source). This can cause missed notifications.

Alternative Ways to Silence Phone

While flipping your phone over to silence it is convenient, there are other options you can use as well:

The mute switch or volume buttons allow you to quickly toggle your phone’s sound on and off. On an iPhone, flipping the mute switch to the on position will silence the ringer and notifications. On an Android device, pressing the volume down button all the way will mute the phone.

Do Not Disturb settings let you schedule times where you don’t want to be interrupted by calls or alerts. You can customize Do Not Disturb on both Android and iPhone to allow certain contacts or repeat callers to bypass the silence.

Airplane mode will turn off all wireless connections, preventing any calls or notifications from coming through. This can be toggled on and off quickly when you need a short period of silence.

Third party apps like Silent Mode offer additional customization for silencing your phone with features like schedule-based automation.

Conclusion

The Flip to Shhh feature provides an easy and convenient way to quickly silence your phone. By enabling this feature in your phone’s settings, you can simply flip your phone face down on a flat surface to mute calls and alerts.

To recap, start by opening your phone’s Settings app and navigating to Sounds and Vibration (or Notifications). Look for the Flip to Mute/Shhh option and toggle it on. You may also be able to customize options like whether to mute media sounds or vibrations.

Once enabled, just flip your phone over whenever you need to quickly silence it. No more fumbling over buttons or sliders when you’re in a meeting or at the theater. The phone will automatically switch back to normal mode when you flip it face up again.

Overall, Flip to Shhh gives you effortless control over your phone’s sounds with just a flip of your wrist. If you ever need to quickly mute your phone, this feature has you covered.