Airplane mode has a bad job description. It sounds like something you do because a flight attendant told you to, or something a phone falls into when it gives up looking for a mast. Used on purpose it is the most reliable social tool on the device: a switch that removes every interruption at once, for everyone, with nobody having to be the person who asks. This is an argument for reaching for it deliberately, and a practical account of what you have to prepare first so the hour actually works. MileSmile is one of the things that has to be prepared, and it is also the reason the hour has something to do in it.

Losing signal and choosing to is not the same thing

A tunnel takes your signal away and everyone knows it will come back in ninety seconds, so nobody settles. People hold their phones through the whole tunnel waiting for the bars. The interruption is postponed rather than removed.

Flight mode is different because it has a decision behind it. Somebody said out loud that this hour is not going to be interrupted, and the switch makes that true rather than aspirational. That is a small thing and it changes how the room behaves, because the escape route is gone and everybody can see that it is gone.

It also removes the negotiation. "Can everyone put their phones down" makes one person the enforcer and everyone else a suspect. "Flight mode until we get to the coast" is a rule about a device, and it applies to the person who suggested it.

Why putting the phone away does not work

The phone in a pocket still buzzes. That is the entire failure. A silent phone that vibrates twice pulls attention out of the room even when nobody looks at it, and the person it belongs to now has a small open loop running for the rest of the conversation.

The second failure is that nothing enforces it. Twenty minutes in, one person checks something for a legitimate reason, which makes it acceptable, and the rule quietly dissolves. There was never a moment where it was switched off, so there is no moment where it was switched back on.

Flight mode fixes both. Nothing arrives, so there is nothing to resist, and turning it back on is a visible act rather than a drift.

What you actually get

The obvious gain is attention. The less obvious ones are worth listing, because they are what makes people keep doing it.

• Battery. A phone with weak or no coverage spends the whole day hunting for a mast, and that hunting is hard on the battery. Flight mode is the single biggest thing you can do for a phone's battery on a rural day out.
• Navigation still works. This is the fact most people do not know. GPS is a receiver, so your position still shows in flight mode. With the region already downloaded, the map keeps working the whole way.
• No side conversation. Six people at a table with no messages means the conversation is the only conversation, rather than the one happening on top of four private ones.
• An ending. Because there is a switch, there is a moment where the thing finishes. That turns out to matter more than the rule itself.

The preparation is what makes it possible

Here is the part the enthusiastic version of this argument leaves out. Flight mode with nothing prepared is not a lovely analogue hour, it is four people looking at a wall. The switch only works if the things you want are already on the device.

So the routine is short and it has to happen while you still have a connection. Download the map region. Download the music, and one long thing that outlasts the drive. Save any tickets as pictures rather than tabs. And prepare whatever is going to carry the conversation, because that is the one people assume needs no preparation.

It does. A conversation game that writes you a fresh question is asking a server for it. In flight mode there is no server, so the pleasant thing you were relying on is the first thing to fail.

What MileSmile does in flight mode

MileSmile saves to the phone in two levels, and which one you choose decides what flight mode looks like.

Text keeps the questions themselves. You read them off the screen, which is fine at a table and awkward in a car.

Audio keeps the questions and their recorded voice. This is the one that matters, because it is what keeps Car Mode alive: the app reads each question out loud and the driver moves to the next with the buttons already on the steering wheel. Flight mode on, phone face down, and the car still has something to talk about for the next hour.

For your own topics you choose the depth, between 20 and 100 questions kept ready, in steps of ten. Ready-made decks come down whole and the phone will hold up to 25 of them. Audio is the part with real size, so where it can the app gives a rough figure before starting, and Settings shows about how much space the saved audio is using and deletes it, keeping the questions, once you confirm.

On what costs money: a ready-made deck's questions download for free, while keeping your own topics offline and downloading the voice are part of the paid plan.

The two things that stay off

The microphone button needs a connection. Tapping it and saying which game to play, or naming a topic, or creating a team, all go to a server, so in flight mode you choose from the screen. There is no wake word and no voice command for next or repeat during play either way.

And saved questions run out. The app will tell you when you have reached the end of what it kept and ask you to reconnect. That is an argument for setting the count high while you have wifi, not an argument against the switch.

Where to actually use it

On a plane, which is the original case

A flight is the one place where everybody is already in flight mode and nobody resents it. Two adults and a bored eight-year-old with three hours to fill is exactly the shape this suits, and a downloaded set of questions read off one screen beats the seat-back entertainment for the first hour. Download in the departure lounge, not on the aircraft.

The first hour of a long drive

Not the whole drive. The first hour, when everyone still has energy and nobody has settled into a film yet. Announce it before you pull away, because announcing it once you are moving sounds like a reaction to something.

Dinner, one night a week

The lowest-effort version of this whole idea. Everyone's phone goes to flight mode when the food lands and comes back when the plates go. One hour, one night, a rule that applies to the adults first.

A hotel evening on holiday

The dead hour between dinner and bedtime, where the alternative is four people on four devices in one room. This is the window a prepared set of questions was made for, and it is why the download happens before you travel rather than in a hotel lobby.

The fair objections

Somebody needs to be reachable. That is usually true, and the answer is not to abandon the idea but to keep one phone on. One adult stays connected, everyone else switches off, and the rule still does its work because the room is not full of buzzing.

Somebody needs to navigate. Already covered: the map works, as long as you downloaded the region.

And an hour is enough. Nobody has to give up their phone for a day to get the benefit, and the version of this that asks for a day is the version that gets abandoned by Tuesday.

What survives the switch

Treat it as a setting you use, not a state you fall into

The switch has been on every phone for as long as phones have had it, sitting one swipe away, described as something to do with aviation. It is really a way of saying that the next hour belongs to whoever is in the room.

Prepare for it on Thursday. Use it on Friday. Turn it off when you get where you were going, and notice how little happened while it was on.