Developer Builds Android Geofencing App to Automate Phone Silencing

After a loud notification interrupted a silent meditation retreat, the author concluded that manually managing phone sound settings is unreliable. The article describes building an app called Muffle that automatically silences a device based on location. Early attempts using continuous GPS polling drained the battery, so the developer switched to Google Play Services' GeofencingClient, which offloads monitoring to the operating system. To reduce false triggers caused by signal drift, the app adds a secondary check on signal strength and timing after each geofence event. The piece also notes that exit transitions proved inconsistent during testing, and the excerpt ends before that issue is resolved.