Solution to deal with alarms in silent mode

Alarms in Android override the silent setting on your phone. 95% of the time, this is just as it should be. For instance, I use my phone as my alarm clock. I don't want notifications disturbing me at night, so I silence my phone when I go to bed. But obviously, I wouldn't want that to override the morning alarm.


Where this can become a problem is when, like me, you rely on alarms for reminders. For instance, I might set twice-daily alarms to remind me to take a dosage of an antibiotic. The problem arises when I silence my phone, as at a movie or, worse yet, a NYC Philharmonic concert, you go to silence , and don't realize I still have that reminder alarm set to go off mid-way through.

So what's the solution? I think it lies with an extension of the functionality of an un-silencer app (e.g., SilenceModeTimer). When you set your phone to silent, this app triggers a dialog that asks you how long to keep your phone silent. The app will then automatically un-silence your phone at the end of that period.

So the extension of that functionality would be:

1. Un-silencer app looks to see if there are any alarms scheduled for the silent period you have selected.
2. If there are any, it warns you.

It's as simple as that. I can think of more elaborate functionality--bringing up the alarm window, letting you choose whether to suppress the alarms, make them only vibrate, etc--but I don't think it is necessary. In fact, the warning could even be static text ("you have alarms scheduled, that will sound during the silent period").