Hands-On Apple 209 transcript

Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.

Mikah Sargent [00:00:00]:
Coming up on Hands on Apple, let's take a look at our sounds and Haptics settings on our iOS and iPad devices. Stay tuned, podcasts you love from people you trust. This is Twit. Hello and welcome to Hands on Apple. I am Micah Sargent and I have really been trying lately to listen in to what people, well, you know, with their permission, what people are saying, what people are complaining about, what issues they're having, what confusion they have about specific parts of their iPhones, their iPads, their Macs, et cetera. And so for the next, you know, few episodes, I really want to try to cover typical frustrations that people are having regarding their devices. So one issue that I have seen experience, and it's actually an issue that I have had myself as well, was something that I solved recently, and it has to do with the loudness of the sound coming out of my Bluetooth connected devices. And depending on what your settings are, how they work, what's what you have going on for you, you may find that you get a better experience once you make changes to the sou that we're going to be talking about today.

Mikah Sargent [00:01:26]:
So let's head over to iOS and much of this would be the same on IPADOs as well as we take a look at sounds and haptics. So here we are on iOS and the first thing we're going to do is tap on the settings app. From here we need to scroll down until we find sounds and haptics. Now we're going to go through these different settings together so that you can understand truly what you are able to change within this area of the phone. So a lot of people think, you know, this is the place where I just change my ringtone. There's so much more that happens here, first and foremost, particularly on newer devices that no longer have that little switch on the side. This is one of the places you can go to turn on silent mode. I happen to have silent mode turned on at all times.

Mikah Sargent [00:02:09]:
It is just a way to keep the phone from making noise throughout the day. I just get vibrations on my phone and on my watch, unless there's special notifications that need to make sound. So silent mode just makes it so that it does not play play ringtones and alerts and system sounds throughout the day. And of course you can use the button on the side that used to be the sleep wake button to be able to now it's called the action button to be able to change that area to turn on and off silent mode. I have mine again on at all times. It does not affect alarms. A lot of people think it does and therefore they don't make use of this feature. It does not affect alarms.

Mikah Sargent [00:02:51]:
Alarms will still play, so that's something to be aware of. The next option here shows show in status bar. Mine is currently toggled off if you have this turned on. What it does is it shows that you have silent mode enabled or disabled in your status bar, which is the area in the top right corner of your phone. So turning this on will then put the little icon that lets you know that silent mode is turned on. Because I always have mine on and I don't really toggle it between. I don't need to have it in status bar. They don't need to have it in the status bar because I don't make use of it.

Mikah Sargent [00:03:27]:
Now, a new option here in the sounds and haptics settings has come by way of the iPhone and iPad's ability to do more local recording on device. So now you are able to change the input on your phone. What does that mean? It means that by default if I were to go into voice memos or another app that does audio recording or an app that does audio calling like FaceTime or Zoom or one of those apps, it would be. By default it would be the iPhone microphone that is listening to my voice. If I were to have my AirPods in right now, it would switch to my AirPods as the default input. But we can tap on this and we can actually change it between automatic, which will kind of switch between them, and in this case, iPhone microphone, because those are the only options we have available. If I had another device connected to this phone that was able to serve as a microphone, that option would show up as well. This is particularly handy if you have, say, headphones that you want to use to hear what's going on in a conversation, but you want to use the built in microphone or some other input option as a way of having your phone hear your voice or other sound around you.

Mikah Sargent [00:04:46]:
So having this input section, we're super happy about it. Celebrate good times, Come on. The next section is all about ringtones and alerts and this is important as well because this is a setting that depending on how you have it set up, is going to make a lot of a difference. So by default I can change the level of volume of ringtone and alerts that would play if I didn't have silent mode enabled. So this is going to make my text tones louder, incoming calls would be louder, any sort of chime or notification or Any of those would be louder. Based on how I move the slider in this section, it's currently set for me at three quarters. If I brought it all the way up again, they would be that loud. Now, the next section is very important because it says change with buttons.

Mikah Sargent [00:05:36]:
Right now, the way for me to change the volume of ringtones and alerts is by going into this page. That means that the buttons on the side, the volume up button and the volume down button do not have an impact on ringtones and alerts. They only have an impact on media that is playing through my device. I like it that way. Some people want to be able to change both their ringtone and alert sounds and their media volume all at once. Some people like to have it separated. That's why Apple gave this option to let it not be changed by this, the buttons on the side. So that way you could, for example, turn up the volume on something you're trying to listen to without having then your ringtone being super loud at the same time.

Mikah Sargent [00:06:25]:
And maybe you want to have your ringtone and your text tones make sound, but just be very quiet so that it's not disturbing other people. If you then went to watch something on, you know, an Instagram reel and you suddenly couldn't hear it and you turned it up and. And then it's turning up your ringtone as well. That's where that's perplexing annoying. So that's why that change with buttons option is there. That's what that means. Again, I have mine turned off. I don't ever really want to hear a ringtone or an alert in the first place.

Mikah Sargent [00:06:56]:
So I have no reason to have that set to change with the buttons. The next section is haptics. This is the built in sort of vibrations that take place on your phone. So feeling those little blips and blops and brr buzzes and twips and in between, that is what this is all about. So right now the question is, when will haptics play on my device? Well, I want them to always play so that if I did have silent mode turned off, it would still, while playing a sound out loud, also vibrate my phone. You can set it so that it's only playing haptics in silent mode. If you do toggle between the two. So that way when you have silent mode turned off, meaning that you have full volume, then it is, or you know, your notifications and your, your ringtones making sound, then what it'll do is it will play those out without vibrating you can also say, don't play in silent mode, which means that if silent mode is turned on, not only do I not want you to make sounds for my incoming texts and calls, I also don't want you to vibrate my phone.

Mikah Sargent [00:08:03]:
I want you to do nothing. And then there's never play, which says, regardless of whether we're in silent mode or in some other, you know, mode, do not disturb whatever. Just don't ever play a. Don't ever do a vibration Haptic. I have mindset to always play. I love haptics. That's how I know that something has, you know, happened on my phone that I need to check while always keeping silent mode turned on. This next section, we're not going to go through it.

Mikah Sargent [00:08:26]:
It's very easy to understand that these are your settings for your ringtone, your text tone, your voicemail, your mail, all of the kind of basic default alerts that are not specific to specific apps. So you can change what sounds are made from those different for those different reasons. Next is keyboard feedback. Now, this says that when I am tapping on my keyboard, I'm okay with sound playing, and I want it to make little vibrations as I'm typing. I like to have the haptics. I technically don't want the sound unless I have silent mode turned off. And the rare occasion when I have silent mode turned off, I actually do like to hear the little sounds that play. That may not be for you.

Mikah Sargent [00:09:14]:
That's why you would turn off, turn off sound. But I definitely have those haptics turned on. The lock sound is currently turned on, which would say that if we were to lock the device and I had silent mode turned off, you would hear a little as it locks the phone and unlocks the phone from pressing the side button. And then system haptics, which basically says that there are different parts of your iOS experience that will make vibrations, and so do you want those to make those vibrations when those opportunities present themselves? Now, another aspect of this to understand is the iPad does not have a haptic engine built into it. Arguably, that is because these devices are bigger, and therefore it would probably require more than one haptic engine to be able to properly make the necessary vibrations for you to feel them. Therefore, that's not the case in an iPad. So you wouldn't have those same haptics controls on the iPad that you do on the iPhone. Now, this next section is very important because it starts to talk about some of the settings that I have heard people complain about that when they're listening to Something and they turn it up, it's really not as loud as they were expecting.

Mikah Sargent [00:10:26]:
Chances are at some point you may have adjusted these settings. The first one says for the built in speaker, what is the volume limit setting? This lets you on your device, toggle on or toggle off a limit for the maximum volume able to come out of your iPhone speaker. Here's the cool thing. This limit does not affect phone calls, facetime calls, emergency calls and alerts, ringtones, alarms, system sounds, or find my sounds. All of those will still play at the maximum volume without any impact. And that's for good reason. Those are the things that you want to be loud enough for you to hear them no matter what. But this does say songs, music and other media, you know, that's not going to blast through your speaker for the sake of, you know, being able to hear it.

Mikah Sargent [00:11:17]:
So if we toggle this on, we can say that the max volume that is able to come out of the speaker is 60% of the technical capacity or capability of the speaker. It goes all the way up to 90% because obviously we want to have some limit if we're turning this on. So we don't set it to 100 because then there's no limit. So I'm going to toggle this off. I have that turned off because one thing that I like to do is if I'm listening to an audiobook and I'm, you know, in the like brushing my teeth or something, that thing's going, you know, in my ears. So being able to hear the audiobook over that is nice. So there may be different tasks that you're doing where you do need it to be loud enough. That's why I have that turned off.

Mikah Sargent [00:12:00]:
But it can be a good thing to turn on if you are. If you find yourself, you know, not necessarily paying attention to or many cases, this is kind of a guardian making this choice to protect the hearing of a child or, you know, someone that they're taking care of. Are you ready to grow in 2026? Let me tell you why advertising on Twitter is the way to make that happen. I'm Micah Sargent. I'm the host of Tech News Weekly and several other shows on the network. And if you've ever listened to our shows, then you know what makes what we do different. It's trust. When we introduce a new partner on the show, the audience knows we believe in what they offer because we're only taking on partners that will actually benefit our audience.

Mikah Sargent [00:12:41]:
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Mikah Sargent [00:13:49]:
Email PartnerWIT TV or visit TWiT TV advertisements. Now, the next section is another one that will have an impact. It's called Reduce Loud Sounds. What this does is it's a little bit of a smart feature in the sense that it is going to kind of process the media that is playing and determine when parts of that media would be louder than other parts of that media and kind of reduce the loudness of those parts. So for example, if you were watching an action movie on your phone for some reason and you came to a crash scene or a bomb scene or whatever, some big loud portion, it would look at the sound leading up to that scene and the sound after that scene and kind of normalize things to a lower volume. So it just helps to kind of make it so that the loudest parts are not incredibly loud and glaring and obnoxious, and that the quiet parts still get to be quiet but also are able to be heard. Because that might be why you're turning up the volume, right? So that you can hear those quiet parts. But then a loud part comes around and suddenly you're going, oh my goodness, I need to turn it down.

Mikah Sargent [00:15:16]:
This prevents you from needing to do something like that. Then the final section, this is the place where I had to go because I had my AirPods in and I was turning them up all the way when I was in kind of a loud setting that was not consistent enough for the noise cancellation to work. And I was still having trouble hearing my AirPods, and I thought, I feel like these could get louder, but for some reason they're not. Well, that's because of a setting I had set in this section. So the headphone safety section has a. An option within it that says reduce loud audio. And you'll notice I still do have mine turned on, but I just turned it up a little bit more than it was. And by that, I sort of technically mean I turned it down.

Mikah Sargent [00:16:06]:
I turned down the effectiveness of it, but turned up the. The sort of upper limit. So when you have reduced loud audio turned on, what happens is it will listen to audio it doesn't actually listen to, but it analyzes the audio in the same way as that kind of reduce loud sound section does. It analyzes the audio that's coming in and then will make sure that any sound that would go over a specific decibel level does not go over that decibel level. And you can set what you want to be the upper limit. So right now, my upper limit is 90 decibels. That's as loud as a motorcycle, but you can turn it down. I had it set to 80, I believe, before, and that's where I was having issues hearing what was actually going on.

Mikah Sargent [00:16:55]:
You can put it all the way down to as loud as a vacuum cleaner. There's as loud as a NOISY restaurant at 80 decibels. 85 decibels is as loud as heavy city traffic. 90 is motorcycle. That's where I have mine now. 95 is as loud as a car horn, and 100 is an ambulance siren. So I have mindset to motorcycle. I don't need it to be any more than that, for sure.

Mikah Sargent [00:17:17]:
And technically it would be better if it was at 85. But I did find that there were times where the upper limit was not high enough for me. And so I did want to make that change for the sake of my experience using it. So if you find that at one point you feel like your AirPods could be louder, but suddenly they're not as loud, this is the place where you want to go to make this change. You'll notice that beneath, or rather above this is another section that says headphone notifications. This is a little notification that can come through that will again analyze when you're listening to audio and if it is regularly above the recommended decibel level for causing harm to your ears, or rather for protecting your hearing if it's above that section, meaning that it could cause harm over A seven day period. So it's basically over the course of seven days you don't want to have audio playing in your ears that's above a certain decibel level. That is where we humans have an understanding that it starts to impact your hearing over time.

Mikah Sargent [00:18:30]:
So as long as you remain under that limit over the course of seven days, you won't get a notification saying, hey, you probably need to turn down your headphones. And in this case you can see that over the last six months I've had no notifications because I regularly have that limited to the decibel level that is is suggested for my area. Now the final section here is USB audio accessories. This is for devices that you plug into your phone that are headphones. So if you have a pair of in, you know, newer phones, USB C headphones, or if you have an older pair of headphones that you plug in by way of the USB C to headphone jack adapter, then, excuse me, those headphones will show up in this section and will then give you the ability to make adjustments to the devices that are plugged in and kind of keep track of those. So by default this is going to work with your Apple branded or Beats branded devices, but you can then add to it. So right now, because I am showing you on screen, my iPhone, this is technically a USB audio accessory. It is taking the audio from my phone and piping it into the recording if I wanted it to.

Mikah Sargent [00:19:56]:
So you'll notice that it says current USB audio accessory headphone audio levels from the connected device will not be saved to health because I don't have that turned on. But if I turned this on, then it would add that as a setting and keep track of that and then let me know over the course of the next six months if, or rather over the course of the next week if I start to listen to audio above that recommended decibel level. So that is what you would do there for privacy's sake. If at any point you want to kind of have it no longer keep track of your USB audio accessories. You can tap that. Forget all USB audio accessories setting which will turn it or which will remove all of those accessories that you've added. So that is, dear friends, a look at the sounds and haptics settings on your iOS iPod devices. Again, I think the important aspect of the important point of this is that there are more settings than just setting your ringtone or turning off vibrations.

Mikah Sargent [00:20:57]:
And if you haven't seen those or didn't know that those features were available, this is your opportunity to go, oh, that's maybe where I need to go to fix this problem that I've been having. So be sure to check that out. And of course, as I mentioned, I'm going to be kind of trying to cover some of the issues that people are regularly talking about as far as I hear them anecdotally and reading online. So if you have special concerns, if you have issues that you've experienced that you'd like for me to cover that regularly, come up with these frustrations, whatever they happen to be, let me know. Micahwit TV is how you get in touch and I will be sure to cover that on a future episode of the show. Thanks so much for tuning in. I'll catch you again in a couple of weeks as next week is Thanksgiving. So we will not be publishing an episode of the show next Thursday.

Mikah Sargent [00:21:50]:
So we'll see you again on December 4th. Bye. Bye.