You can do it on iPhone too, and I still do. Yeah, I know, I’m antiquated.
I like to set my default ringtone to silence, and then give known contacts a real sound for calls AND texts. I’ve been doing this for about ten years and the peace of it is fantastic. I didn’t wait for Apple to do it for me, I just created a 2 second .wav of silence and then jumped through the hoops to get it on the phone as a ringtone and then set it to default. The very few times I’ve missed a first time contact that I actually wanted to hear from is nothing compared to the mountains of unwanted shit I’ve missed.
But there’s a catch. Now, whenever I blow away the OS of an old device, I have to manually re-import my SilentRing.m4r since the devices are all still connected to my Apple ID – it doesn’t matter that my iPhone ring is silent if my iPad starts ringing anyway, lol.
Easy enough to do, though. I think Apple gives you the option of a default silent ring in the OS now, but for anyone who is using an older iOS or just wants to try it:
https://www.howtogeek.com/248489/how-to-add-custom-ringtones-to-your-iphone/