Setting Up an Away Message

May 2020

A huge inspiration for the concept of ‘going light’ was our initial experiences with the internet, particularly AIM and the idea of an away message. In these days there was a clear distinction between being online and offline, and we came to miss that boundary with a smartphone always in our pockets.

If the Light Phone is not your only phone, it may be helpful to set up an auto-reply text message for when you are not with your smartphone. For iPhones, this does require a little bit of a hack which we'll outline. For Android, there are many options available through the app store with different settings or levels of control.

(special thanks to one of our Kickstarter backers for pointing this out for us to share — thanks Mikael K.!)

iOS Auto-Reply “Hack”

In iOS 11 there is a new feature — do not disturb while driving — that allows you to set up an automated-text response. It is intended to be used while driving, however you can turn it on manually whenever you’d like. Open your Settings>Do Not Disturb>then scroll to Do Not Disturb While Driving. Leave the Activate set to “Manually” and customize the auto-response message to whatever you would like.

As you can see in the example above, two text message get sent to the recipient, your customized response and an automated iOS response which cannot be edited. The confusion will come in if you are in fact using a Light Phone, as texting “urgent” will not notify the Light Phone, but one can indicate such in the custom response area. However, if you are using this feature without a Light Phone, it will still limit the text messages that come through to your iPhone, and the “urgent” feature will in fact work.

Now to add the Do Not Disturb While Driving Feature to your phone’s Control Center so you can easily turn it On/Off.

Go to Settings > Control Center > and find the Do Not Disturb While Driving feature under MORE CONTROLS to add it to your Control Center.

It is a hack in that you can use it for going light whether you are driving or not. Although not 100% seamless because of the un-editable iOS message, it might still prove really useful for you.

Android Options

Unlike iOS, there have been many options for automatic responses on Android smartphones for quite some time. Some versions of Android have it built into the operating system, but there are a variety of third party apps with different levels of control or settings - like scheduling the auto-replies. We'd recommend doing a quick search at which apps might best suite your needs. One that we've heard good things about it called " SMS Auto Reply"