Phones need a "Do Not Distract" Mode

Most phones have a Do-not-disturb mode for users who desire to not be disturbed, obviously. These modes typically:

• disable audiable alerts for things like calls, messages, and notifications
• disable vibrations along with the audible alerts
• allow for exceptions such that you don't miss your alarm or miss an important call

As somebody who is on a journey to disconnect more, this is almost perfect, but there are some changes I'd make to formulate a sort of Do-not-Distract mode.

The ideology of my DnD is better illustrated with an example scenario. Suppose I wanted to take a walk for the purposes of getting away from all the business. I would need my phone so that people can still contact me. However, I would like my phone to not distract me such that even when I am physically away from my computer and all the connectedness it brings, I am pulled back via a notification sound.

The common Do-not-Disturb¹ doesn't work for this scenario for a couple reasons:

• It silences calls
• It doesn't disable notifications, i.e, they are still emitted, just silenced.
• Doesn't augment the user interface in any meaningful way

What I'd like to augment to it is the following:

• Allow for audible alerts for phone calls, and messages
  • and to only allow for audible phone calls from VoIP services
• Disable all notifications except for SMS, and specific contacts from things like Telegram and whatnot.
• Completly hide the aforementioned notifications from the user interface. I don't want to see a YouTube notification while I was checking to see if I got texts on my walk.
• Only show important applications on the home screen.
  • Allow the user to define which apps are important.

One can see how this can be useful for other scenarios like for somebody who is trying to concentrate on work without missing important calls, or somebody who is trying to study but still need their flash-cards that are on their phone.

It's not necessary that this mode is standardized in any way, but it should be easier to facilitate this in a one-click manner. Currently, I am forced to traverse a menagerie of menus and install third party applications² to find peace. To avoid doing all this work, I have overwritten the default DnD mode with my custom settings. This of-course means I can not use the defaults. Perhaps some sort of DnD profiles would be a good idea, but I digress.