Video doorbells come with all sorts of really neat features, but one feature that tends to get overlooked is the ability to shut off your indoor doorbell chime whenever you want.
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This is great if you don’t want the kids woken up when someone comes to the door or if you want some peace yourself. I mute the indoor chime so it doesn’t startle one of my cats, because she’s literally a big scaredy cat and won’t tolerate other people. And since 80% of the people that come to our door are postal carriers dropping off a package, it’s not worth startling the cat.
What Does This Do Exactly?
If your video doorbell is hooked up to a mechanical indoor chime (or a plug-in add-on chime, like this one from Ring), you can tell it to silence the chime in the settings. All this does is render the indoor chime inoperable whenever someone rings your doorbell. Keep in mind that this doesn’t break the chime, but only interrupts the connection until you tell it not to anymore.
The way a traditional doorbell works is that there is a small wire going from the doorbell chime to the doorbell button, and then another small wire going from the button back to the chime. When these two wires connect (by pressing the doorbell button), it completes the electrical circuit, and the chime goes off.
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When you mute the indoor chime on your video doorbell, it essentially just keeps the wires disconnected no matter what, even when the button is pressed. Therefore, the indoor chime will never sound.
How to Mute Your Indoor Chime
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Source: How-To Geek