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Today I learned that iPad and iPhone have sound controls for notifications (separate from the device volume), which also applies to things like tapping FB controls.

(Note: Please don’t tell me to switch to non-Apple devices. That’s annoying and not helpful.)

I’ve known for a long time that device volume was context-dependent; using the volume-control buttons in a given context doesn’t necessarily affect the volume in other contexts. But for the most part, I keep audio turned off on all of my devices, so it didn’t matter much. And I used to intentionally keep audio notifications turned on, because it used to be (iIrc) that when the device volume was turned off, audio notifications caused the device to vibrate, which was usually helpful to me.

But lately I’ve had several particularly annoying audio issues, involving too-loud audio notifications even when my device volume is set to zero. I think most of these have only started happening in the past few months, or sometimes the past few weeks. Below is a list of such issues and how I’ve now fixed them.

• On my phone, the timer-is-done sound has been REALLY REALLY LOUD. I set timers frequently, but every time a timer completed, it would make a sound so loud that I would jump and curse and drop the iPhone. I think I eventually fixed that by going to Settings, then Sounds & Haptics, then moving the slider under Ringtone and Alerts to a more reasonable volume.
• Yesterday afternoon, the application called Due was giving me an alert every five minutes (as it’s supposed to do). Every time a Due notification came up, a soft chiming sound came from somewhere in my room. I checked all of my Apple devices, and the volume was set to zero on all of them, but the chiming kept happening. I’ve now gone to Settings > Notifications > Due and turned off Sounds.
• On my iPad, tapping any control in Facebook (such as a Like button) causes a sound, even though my device volume is set to zero. I fixed that by going to Settings > Sounds, and turning on Silent Mode. (Unlike every other item on this list, in this case you turn on a setting to turn off sounds.) There’s also a Silent Mode control in Control Center on iPad (but not on iPhone)—it looks like a little bell, and if you tap it, it turns red and gets a slash through it, which means you’re in Silent Mode.
• Every time a new email arrives in Gmail on my Mac, I get a too-loud audio notification. I’ve now gone to System Settings > Notifications, and under Application Notifications, I clicked Google Chrome, and then I turned off “Play sound for notification.”
• When I’m listening to music on my Apple headphones and a notification arrives, the music gets muted in order for Siri to read the notification text aloud to me. To try to fix that, I went to Settings > Notifications, and then under Siri, I went to Announce Notifications and turned it off. I also went to Settings > Accessibility, and then under General, I went to Siri, then I turned off Announce Notifications on Speaker. Not yet sure whether either of those things have fixed the problem.

Whew. I’m hoping that that set of changes will solve most of my too-loud-alerts problems, and if it doesn’t, now I know where most of the controls are to make further changes.

But I do find it annoying that there doesn’t seem to be a centralized place where I can say “Don’t give me audio notifications.”

(This is all somewhat complicated by the fact that I *do* want reasonably loud audio notification in one specific situation: When I set a wake-up alarm. I’m still not clear on whether the volume for that is separate from the volume for all these other things.)

Originally posted on Facebook.