[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] lair12:
Guide to silencing your camera “clock” sound; changing your power on sound; power off sound; and/or changing your TouchWiz or other interface sounds for Verizon Samsung Galaxy S3 ROOTED only.

There have been questions posted on how to silence your camera app on the SGS3 and to modify other user interface sounds. Verizon does not easily allow this change, while some other providers do provide an option for this in their sound settings.

NEW EDIT: After several days of using my original post, I have come to the conclusion that one should set up two different ways of silencing.

1 – My way posted below provides a great and easy way to silence the power off and the power on sounds. It also will silence the shutter, but does NOT seem to silence the autofocus sounds. So I am now using my original METHOD ONE posted below for silencing the power sounds. The “Power Off” can be muted here and has been confirmed. I like to mute this, because often if I need to power down in a theater or quiet area and it is annoying to get the powering down sound that I am trying to avoid in the first place.

2 – BUT, another METHOD TWO (which is not all my work) does work better for total camera silence as it stops sound from the shutter and the autofocus when you want no sounds associated with your taking pictures (museums, concerts, churches).

Of course, you are solely responsible for your own phone actions, but this method is pretty straight forward and reversible!

METHOD ONE: (best for power on and power off silence)

1 – Install ES File Explorer Manager (ESFEM) from the app store.

2 – Open ESFEM and press the Menu key (capacitive button to the left of the home key) and press Settings.

3 – Check ON the following:

a) Up To Root

b) Root Explorer

c) Mount File System

d) Backup System App

4 – Go back to the app and click UP until you are at the root (it will show “/” in the top bar).

5 – Navigate to system/media/audio/ui

6 – Press and hold the folder name until the Operations screen comes us and you can scroll down to (and select) Bookmark/Favorites so you can quickly get back to this in the future.

7 – Scroll down to the file PowerOn.ogg, PowerOff.ogg or Shutter.ogg and press and hold to bring up an edit menu.

8 – Rename file extension to .og and then click “OK”.

9 – Exit the program

10 – To resume the sound, just open ESFEM, go to your favorites, select this same folder and rename extensionback to .ogg. This takes about 10 seconds to complete and you are back to factory sound.

Other sound files in this folder:

Camera_click.ogg

Auto_focus.ogg (cannot be silenced this method)

Auto_focus.error.ogg (cannot be silenced this method)

Camera_click_short.ogg

Shutter_multiple.ogg

PowerOn.ogg

PowerOff.ogg

Plus various Touchwiz (TW) and other user interface sounds.

METHOD TWO: (best for camera silence; not all my new work, but a comprehensive guide to the steps to complete this task)

1 - in Word, Notepad or Wordpad create a file named local.prop.txt

2 – put the following text in the file: ro.camera.sound.forced=0

3 – save file, then go to file explorer and change name to local.prop

4 – send this file to camera memory or memory card through Dropbox, direct hookup of phone to computer, or any other method that works for you.

5 – Install ES File Explorer Manager (ESFEM) from the app store.

6 – Open ESFEM and press the Menu key (capacitive button to the left of the home key) and press Settings.

7 – Check ON the following:

a) Up To Root

b) Root Explorer

c) Mount File System

d) Backup System App

8 – Go back to the app and click UP until you are at the root (it will show “/” in the top bar).

9 – Navigate to /Data

10 – Press and hold the folder name until the Operations screen comes us and you can scroll down to (and select) Bookmark/Favorites so you can quickly get back to this in the future.

11 – Navigate to your location where you saved the local.prop file

12 – Click and hold on the file name until the selection box comes up and you can choose Copy

13 – Then hit Favorites, or otherwise navigate back to /Data, and press the menu key until the selection box comes up and you choose Paste

14 – Check to make sure the file has been properly copied

15 – Reboot your phone

16 – Now, when you put your phone in mute mode, the camera will not make any sounds.