It happened during a Friday prayer service. The room was deathly quiet, the speaker was mid-sentence, and suddenly, my pocket erupted with the aggressive, high-pitched default ringtone of my phone. Every single head in the room turned toward me in that split second of profound awkwardness. I wasn't just embarrassed; I was frustrated with myself. I had specifically remembered to silence my phone before I walked into the building, but I had clearly toggled the wrong setting or perhaps tapped the volume rocker just enough to trigger a notification sound instead of total silence.

We have all been there. Whether it is a crucial boardroom meeting, a medical consultation, or a lecture hall, our phones are supposed to be tools that assist us, yet they constantly become sources of public disruption. The problem is not that we are forgetful; it is that the manual process of managing a phone's sound profile is a high-friction task.…