Digital Disconnect: How Custom Modes Can Help You Unplug

We've had a rule at Synergy Technical since our earliest days that vacation days are sanctified. If you're taking one, you're not supposed to do any work. That means no replying to emails or chats, no calls, no nothin'. It's a good cultural rule, but one that can be difficult to follow.

I was chatting with a colleague before the holidays about vacation plans and how to unplug from work, and he blew my mind with his technique: completely uninstall Microsoft Outlook and Teams and any work-related apps from his phone. It works but feels like a nuclear option. 

But it got me thinking about other ways to manage the dings and chimes of modern connected life, and that lead me to poking around in my mobile phone for answers. 

Anybody who's traveled by plane in the past 25 years is familiar with Airplane Mode, which disables all the radios in your phone and is required to be enabled by FAA/FCC rules (even if the logic behind it is dodgy and outdated*), but modern mobile phones--dating all the way back to early Blackberry devices--support more complex modes that can be triggered by myriad events to help sculpt your mobile experience. Android calls them "Modes & Routines", where iOS calls them "Focus modes". 

By default, your phone likely has a few modes built in, though they're equally likely to be unconfigured and have no pre-defined triggers. Being a bit pointless out of the box, they're often ignored in favor of just turning on Airplane Mode, or doing what I did for 3 whole years: enabling "Do Not Disturb", which limits the folks who can call me to my favorite contacts and all-but-eliminates notifications. Still nuclear, but a more tactical nuke. We can do better. 

Starting with our built-in default modes, most modern mobile OS's have at least the following in some iteration:

• Work
• Driving
• Night/Sleep

While these are empty by default, it's easy to guess the basic goals of these might be to silence notifications while at work because we're already looking at mail & chat; to restrict app usage while driving; and to silence notifications at night. It's also easy to guess that different triggers might be involved in activating these modes, so while two modes may take similar actions, they can be enabled by totally different mechanisms, like the GPS or network name of the office, as opposed to your usual bedtime.

And you're not limited to these built-in modes, no matter how many there may be in your ecosystem. You can create custom modes for any number of purposes, like Vacation!

Triggers and Actions

Let's look at the triggers we can use and the actions we can take, then, to build out a set of modes to get us through the day and out the door for that much-needed break.

There are a lot of triggering events available in Android, and probably just as many (maybe more!) in iOS.

• Manual Activation through either a button or the Modes app
• Automatic Activation built-in conditions:
  • Location
    • Wifi Network
    • GPS (with fencing up to ~1 mile)
    • Arrival or departure
  • Time
    • Sunrise to Sunset
    • Sunset to Sunrise
    • All Day (24h)
    • Custom Time range
    • Every Day
    • Every week (with day-of-week selector)
    • Every Month
  • Bluetooth - specific device (connect or disconnect)
  • App (trigger on launching an app)
• Automatic Activation additional supported conditions:
  • Wifi strength
  • Airplane Mode
  • Mobile Hotspot & Mobile Data
  • Connected Devices
    • Android Auto (connect or disconnect)
    • Link to Windows
    • Smart View
    • Multi control
    • Samsung DeX (specific to Samsung devices)
  • Wired Headphones
  • Charging Status & battery conditions
  • Sound Mode
  • Dark mode
  • Game / media being played
  • Calls

Once we've chosen the trigger (or triggers) to activate our mode, we need to decide *what* it does, and for this our options are generally grouped into 3 categories: ways to avoid distractions, phone configurations, and appearance.

• Avoid Distractions:
  • Do not Disturb (my favorite!)
    • Block calls & messages, white-list key contacts & repeat callers
    • Block app notifications EXCEPT white-listed apps
  • Restrict app usage EXCEPT white-listed apps
• Configuration:
  • Color Modes
    • Grayscale
    • Dark Mode
    • Eye comfort Shield (with custom color-temp setting)
  • Sound Modes & Volume
    • Play Music
    • Media Volume
    • Read notifications aloud (with app selector)
  • Power Saving
  • Apps
    • Open an App
    • Do an App Action
• Appearance:
  • Configure Lock Screen
  • Configure Home Screen(s)

One note about appearance––in Android this is limited to configuring the backgrounds of the home screens, whereas iOS appears to take this a bit further, incorporating which home screens are present, and how apps are arranged within them.

There's a lot you can do to control your experience and avoid nuclear options. And with all these triggers and controls and options, I started messing around... on a vacation day (sorry!) with how to avoid work buzzes. I started by creating a custom mode called 'Vacation'. This mode has a manual trigger, which I created as a widget on my home screen called "Turn on Vacation Mode". Hitting this button changes my home and lock screens to photos taken on a recent vacation, making it instantly visually recognizably different from my normal phone mode.

Once activated, Do not disturb is enabled, with bypasses set for my favorited contacts, who are likely with me on vacation, so it would be super friendly for them to be able to call & message me. However, only a few apps are able to send me notifications, including our home automation apps, wireless emergency alerts, and personal email.

Then, finally, I have all work apps blocked by app restriction policy. Intune is still able to push configurations to my phone thru the Company Portal app, but Outlook, Teams, and OneDrive are parked. They're greyed-out icons that cannot be launched without exiting Vacation mode.

And it worked perfectly. For the entire time I was on vacation, I was able to focus on my family and our time together. It never felt like I was restricted from doing what I needed to, either.

Building My Digital Day

So with that success, I opened some of the other modes and built out my digital day, from Sleep mode turning on at a very responsible 10:30p and lasting 8 hours (9 on weekends!) blocking notifications & muting sounds; to Driving being activated by connection to either my car's Bluetooth or my wife's Android Auto, blocking notifications, and then enabling my preferred navigation app; to Work activating on connection to the company's WiFi and blocking notifications, enabling Do not disturb, and restricting distracting personal apps.

It's worth noting that the button I created to enable Vacation mode from the home screen is what Android calls a "Routine", and that these Routines include an even larger pool of triggers and can activate more than just Modes. You can seriously get lost in the dizzying array of ways to manipulate your mobile experience!

It's also worth noting that there are a few things that cannot be used as triggers, even though they feel like they *should* be available:

• Calendar events
• In-pocket detection
• Device Orientation (face-up or face-down)

It really bums me out that I cannot activate a mode or routine by a calendar event. I would love to have my calendar blocked with "vacation" and have my phone automatically enable that mode without any further interventions, especially since Outlook can automatically clear my calendar and set out-of-office auto-replies during vacation periods. But while I can control my apps, I do not appear to be able to ingest their content as a trigger. That's probably a good thing from a data-security perspective, and I'm probably just being greedy for features.

Similarly, I'd love to have in-pocket detection or device orientation (both of which exist on all the major platforms!) available to trigger a mode or routine. Maybe this works in iOS, but I used to be able to put my Android phone face-down on the table and have that automatically enable Do not disturb. This was great for meetings and distraction-free family dinners.

In a world of ever-increasing intersection between work-time and personal-time, and in which Microsoft has discontinued its Viva Headspace product centered on protecting the "digital commute" and wellbeing, device modes can help you carve out and separate those times without going full nuclear and enabling DnD for years or constantly having to re-install apps. Give it a shot and let me know what modes & features work best for you! 

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