Assign custom vibrations to your Android contacts

My Samsung Android phone is set to vibrate throughout most of the day regardless of whether I'm at home or on the way. I may be a bit old fashioned in this regard but when my phone's ringtone starts to sound in public, I'm starting to feel embarrassed. There are others who do not seem to care though and enjoy a loud talk in a crowded or public space.

One of the limitations of muting your phone is that you do not really know who is calling if someone is calling until you look on the display of the phone.

It does not really matter if you have set the phone to vibrate or be completely silent, both do not reveal information about the caller until you pick up the phone and look at the screen.

While you could say that this is true for calls as well, you can assign different ringtones to different contacts.

Update: Vybe is not available anymore. You can try comparable applications such as Good Vibrations instead which offer that and more.

Tip: You can configure Android's Priority Mode to get calls or notifications from select contacts only.

Vybe

Vybe is a free application for Android that enables you to create custom vibrations for your contacts so that you can identify them correctly based on that without looking at the phone.

The application displays a short tutorial first that walks you through its feature set. You are taken to the application's main screen afterwards where you can start to create custom vibration patterns.

To do so click on the red record button first and then with your finger on the vibration circle at the top. You can now create a series of long and short vibrations that make up the new pattern. The application indicates those in a graph at the bottom of the screen.You can play the created pattern here for testing purposes as well. If you are satisfied with your selection, you can save it to the phone or use the undo button instead to start over.

A tap on the people's icon on the right bottom of the screen opens your contacts list. Here you can select one or multiple contacts you want to assign the vibration pattern to.

To throw two ideas in the room: you could create vibration groups, e.g. work, family, friends, and assign them individual vibrations, or you could go all in and assign different vibrations to the most important contacts in the list, e.g. your mum, boss or children.

All contacts you have assigned a custom vibration to show a specific icon afterwards indicating this. While that is convenient for a general overview, it lacks clarity in terms of which vibration was set to which contact as there is no distinction made here.

An option to assign names to vibration patterns and display the list of contacts with custom patterns based on that would have been handy, especially for users who have lots of contacts in their address book.

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