I wish there was a feature to “turn off the ringer,” so to speak. Flip a switch and if someone calls, you never know about it, but they can still leave a voicemail that you will be notified of.
1 Like
Zero volume ring tone?
Unfortunately, as far as I am aware, there is no sane way of customising the ring tone as yet.
I think there’s a whole lot of “nice to have” call handling capability, once more fundamentals are out of the way.
No imperialism solving tech problems thanks…The NSA does enough as it is…
I meant with any mobile device. And not just silencing it, even on a per-contact basis. I want the phone to not react to a phone call, neither by ringing, vibrating, nor showing something on the screen, but still notify me of voicemails until I change the setting to turn the ringer back on.
1 Like
In that case … see my third paragraph above. 
Linphone (available from F-Droid, among other places) has a built-in SMS function, but I have no experience with how it integrates with the VOIP provider. I have tested phone calls with it, and they work great. Linphone’s a nice, intuitive app overall, and also works on desktop.
VOIP provider Callcentric, as one example, says that SMS can be viewed either in your online account, or in the Callcentric app (not available from F-Droid). You can also set SMS to forward to your email addresss. I haven’t enabled SMS in my Callcentric account, so I can’t say how well it works. They also seem to promote the Acrobits app for some reason, claiming it works better than other apps. (It comes with a nominal initial fee from the non-privacy-respecting app stores.)
As far as I know, no VOIP provider can accommodate MMS.
You can also use the native phone dialer in Android to add a SIP account, but I don’t see a setting for SMS, like the Linphone app has.
Linphone (dark mode):
Edit: Maybe I should rephrase something: There’s a “Chat” option, so that may or may not refer to actual “SMS.” Possibly another type of chatting.
1 Like
I use callcentric sms for 2FA and have the email forwarding option on and it works well. A number that I just added sometimes requires a response and unfortunately one cannot reply from the email; this set me looking for an app that would allow me to reply. I’ll try linphone and see if I can get it to work.
1 Like
Jmp.chat does. Use the android dialer for calls (or Linphone, if you want) and any xmpp account for SMS and MMS.
1 Like
Signal just pulls your SMS/MMS into the client after your phone has already received them over the mobile network, or, when sending, passes them off to the mobile network for transmitting. It doesn’t actually carry the messages from point A to point B on any network; it only gathers them into the client for you.
If you’re not actually connected to the mobile network, no SMS or MMS can be handled by Signal, unfortunately.
2 Likes
Ah! GTK
In general moving away from SMS/MMS and email is the better solution for privacy anyway.
XMPP w/ OMEMO FTW!
1 Like
Yes, if you can get everyone on the same sheet of music (or federated music). 
3 Likes
Working on it.
3 Likes
Keep working! I just got my 91 year old mother to switch from G00gle hangouts to telegram. Not only more private but higher quality video chats.
3 Likes
Heh I moved my family to telegram just in time to discover xmpp. The battle continues…
3 Likes
May I ask why Telegram and not Signal?
1 Like
Pure practicality. I originally wanted to put both on it (as a backup) but there were issues with her cell phone number so I used one of mine. After I set her up with Telegram, I realized everybody whom I know who has that number would show up on Signal, so I didn’t set her up with Signal. When I go to see her the next time I hope to add Signal as well.
1 Like
jmp.chat is a good service
3 Likes