SEPARATE THE ALARM AND RINGER VOLUME.

So I’ve seen a couple of threads with the same topic, starting from around 2013. This issue still hasn’t been resolved after about 8 years. I am on iOS 14.

Many solutions have been provided in these threads, but unfortunately, none of them are effective. I’m sad that Apple seems to not care. I’m also surprised to have seen so many rude and passive-aggressive responses from people that are supposed to “help”, when in reality they’re the ones that don’t understand the problem at all.

So I will restate what the issue is, the solutions that have been given, and why these solutions don’t work. Hopefully this will clear up any confusion, and hopefully Apple will consider resolving this problem because I am positive that this “minor” issue has caused many people to transfer to android.

_____THE PROBLEM:____

iPhone has only two distinct volumes: “Ringers and alerts” (ringtone, alarm, notification sounds) and “Media” (music, games, in-app sounds).

The sound of the ringer (incoming phone calls) and the sound of alerts (notification sounds and alarm sounds) are not separated. This is a problem for people who actually use their iphone as an alarm in the morning. To get around this, we would have to turn the volume down every night, and remember to turn it up every morning. One mishap in this annoying daily routine will cause us to miss very important calls/notifications (because the volume was set to quiet), or cause people to wake up to a blaring loud alarm noise in the morning (because the volume was set to loud). 

____WHAT WE WANT:____

To be able to adjust the volume of these two functions separately. We want to be able to set the volume of our alarms to a specific level, and set the volume of our ringtone to a different level.

Suggestions from these threads:

1. “Mute the phone” or “Use Do not Disturb”

This turns OFF the sound. We still want to hear phone calls or alarms.

1. “Go to settings, go to sounds, and at ‘ringer and alerts’, turn off ‘change with buttons’.

All this does is prevent you from adjusting the ringer & alerts sound with the buttons on the side of your phone.

1. “Go to the Alarms app, edit the alarm, click on a sound/song, turn the volume down while it is playing.”

This still also changes the ringer volume.

1. “Use a third-party alarm app such as Nightstand”

This is a good alternative, but it still has flaws. These apps don’t work well for me. With Nightstand Central specifically, not only do you have to pay for an ad-free experience, but sometimes it doesn’t even work at all. Apparently the app must always be running in the background, but sometimes even WITH the app still open in the background, it still doesn’t alarm. Unfortunately, third-party apps can still cause mishaps.

1. “Use the bedtime app”

This is the perfect solution... for people who have only ONE alarm. The bedtime app allows for only one alarm, so you can’t set another “bedtime alarm” for a different time in the morning, much less a different time later in the day. This is also an issue for people who don’t want all the excess features of the bedtime app, such as tracking your phone usage or sleep time. (But this goes to show that Apple CAN separate the volumes, as they did in this app, but for some reason didn’t implement it in the entire phone.)

Apple, I seriously hope you will take this into consideration. I would be forever grateful.