SkieCan hostel night mode still allow phone calls?
Yes. Hostel night mode is an overnight window that hides games, video and social apps while leaving calls available, so a student can phone home or the warden in an emergency. You choose what stays allowed. It switches on at lights-out and off in the morning without anyone locking devices by hand.
Wardens usually want two things that seem to pull apart: no scrolling at 1 am, and a student who can still reach family. A night window handles both. Allow the dialler and the clock, hide everything else, and the device is useful for a call but useless for a late-night video session.
The window runs overnight, for example from lights-out to the morning bell. You pick the days. Weekends can have their own window with different times. If there is a study block earlier in the evening, put it as its own window and let the device move through study, free time and night on its own.
Outgoing calls and SMS are policy switches. If you also want to stop texting at night, the SMS switch is a policy choice, though it applies for the policy's duration rather than only overnight, so think about whether you need it all day. Bluetooth and the camera are separate switches in the same way.
A geofence can alert you if a device leaves campus, and a missed check-in counts as a breach, so a switched-off phone does not go unnoticed. Contacts-only calling is not available yet. A practical tip: share the night rules with students and parents at admission, and write them into the hostel handbook, so the first night is not a surprise.