Android: Enable Shortcut to Prevent Ringing

If your phone starts ringing at full volume during a meeting, the fastest way to silence it is a hardware shortcut built into Android's sound system. Enable it once and you can mute or switch to vibrate instantly by pressing the power button and the volume-up button at the same time.

This shortcut lives inside Sound and vibration settings. Open Settings ➔ Sound and vibration ➔ Shortcut to prevent ringing, then toggle Use prevent ringing on. Choose whether the shortcut should switch the ringer to Vibrate or straight to Mute.

Why it stops working suddenly

If the button combo does nothing, check that the toggle is still enabled, since some system updates reset accessibility shortcuts. On devices running a newer Android release, the shortcut may be missing entirely: it was removed starting with Android 14, so this workaround only applies to older Android versions.

Use Do Not Disturb instead if you need scheduled silence rather than a one-time mute, since it also blocks notification sounds and vibrations beyond a single incoming call.