How to turn off Headphone Safety on iPhone

Don’t question Apple employees is your answer? That’s a useless statement. You’re assuming the level 1 help desk that answers the incoming support questions haven’t been told to respond a certain way to some questions, or aren’t just making it up. I’ve worked in IT for several large companies, and yes help desk does give convenient answers to shut users up. I live in the U.S. and had these options on my iPhone X running iOS 14 until I traded it a few days ago. My new iPhone 12 Pro does not have the option to turn it off. I think this was a choice by Apple, to begin forcing “health” options on users to further some other eventual goal. Perhaps forced sharing of health stats, or participation in exposure notifications.

As with everything in life that is legal but unhealthy, it’s your own choice, and the choice should be your own. There’s things like solariums, cigarettes and alcohol that are all unhealthy yet nobody cuts off your supply... I am a musician and I like listening to my music at a reasonable Volume but that’s via Bluetooth in the car or Hi-Fi at home. I rarely use headphones which is the most damaging with prolonged use.

this is not a big, merely an example of Apples reduced quality since Jobs. User experience is everything and sets apart products that physically differ minimally. It’s a display of elementary omission of software testing. A fundamental screw up...

Sandaeson wrote:

As with everything in life that is legal but unhealthy, it’s your own choice, and the choice should be your own.

And Apple has a choice to make their software the way they want. They have the right to change iOS at any time and, if they think that this is the best way to reduce liability, then they have the right to do that. You have the right to complain to Apple (complaining here, though, is pointless). You have the right to buy a different device.

I'm in the US, where no such regulation exists, and I can't turn it off either so it's a bug.....they need to figure out how to make this feature region specific and give those of us not in those regions the ability to shut it off

This feature shouldn’t be turned on in any region. It’s one thing to set a notification warning and it’s another to actually change the volume on someone’s phone. It seems to me that Apple is measuring the volume setting on the iPhone and not the actually Db level coming out of the Bluetooth speaker which is another fatal flaw in this whole debacle.

Seeing the same thing myself still on IOS 14.3, sadly.

No reason why this needs to be forced on, and it's utterly ridiculous when notifications are sent without any basis for the actual notification, i.e. a phone connected to an external audio system that's **turned down**. I can have the audio on my car stereo turned down to a whisper, but since the iPhone's volume is maxed, it "must be too loud" according to iOS.

Utterly. Ridiculous. Maybe I should go get an Android and return my new iPhone.

If they insist on keeping this feature it should be linked to parental control options, not adults freedom of choice. Smoking and drinking can kill you but you are not limited to how much you buy each time you shop.

plus if Apples inability to acknowledge what Bluetooth device I’m listening to, you deserve to be dropped from the top tier frankly.

Oh wow. I just came across this on ios 14.3 whilst washing my car. I use bone conduction headphones, whatever SPL the phone thinks I have in my ears/speakers/stereo/ whatever, is totally not the case. Having to put the volume back up periodically so I can actually hear the music when I have wet hands is infuriating.

I am just trying to work out whether there is another angle to get rid of this annoyance by disabling apple health. I found somewhere to delete all the data from my phone from apple health, maybe that will help avoid warnings if I do that at the start of a period whenI don't want them.

I have sent feedback. I noted that that feedback site does not have ios 14.3 as a value in the drop down list. The highest is 14.2. That's pretty shoddy. Live chat told me this is a feature, I have asked for a call back from a supervisor this week.

No, I don't believe there is any EU law that makes this mandatory. Its ridiculous and I would love for someone to point me at such a law. I am a remain-er but this would set me off for sure : ) .

Finally if I have to reach for my phone every N minutes when I am driving to put the phone back to max volume so that the car's volume is correct, then this is categorically dangerous in another way.

We need a way to disable this.

// update - I can delete data in Health but can't disable or prevent it being logged. If I delete data it seems I might get 4 hours without the notification as my headphones seem to track to "99db" (right..) on max. I don't want this data logged - does anyone know if this is a GDPR issue ?

It's just a mandate in most of the EU but is actual law in France.

Sadly the actual CENELEC standards are only available by paying a relatively large fee.

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_09_1364

https://ec.europa.eu/health/ph_risk/committees/04_scenihr/docs/scenihr_o_018.pdf

More on the French law:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg15020362-100-falling-on-deaf-ears-a-new-french-law-will-curb-the-volume-of-personal-stereos-to-protect/

What makes this tricky is that while it is a law only in France, the EU and CENELEC findings are encoded into safety regulations.

What this means is if your device institutes these warnings, it passes safety standards.

If it does not, as a manufacturer you have to pay a rather large fee to have testing done to prove your device is in fact safe before it will be allowed to be sold in the EU.

In most cases the easiest and cheapest option is to follow the safety recommendations.

Using this forum is useless I've just got the message from moderator that my workaround post was deleted because was n't constructive.

So I think that only constructive comment is : if I don't like this bug - oh I'm sorry, it's not a bug, it's a feature - I won't buy iphone any more.

It isn't either, it is the law in France and Apple has no choice but to do this. If you are going to buy another smartphone do it quickly as all other manufacturers will also be required to do this or discontinue sales in the EU.

Carrying the safety warning is one thing, it seems very irregular that I cannot, through means of waiver/disclaimer/whatever override this and stop it from interfering. Much like the car driving mode thing which was 5 years too late as we all had in car hands free already so it was both irrelevant and annoying.

The other thing that is odd is that the phone really does not know the SPL. My bluetooth speakers and my car have separate volume controls, my headphones are not at 100db when my phone thinks they are.

There is no law in France that requires the implementation introduced in 14.2. The French laws on audio players have been around for many years. They merely set volume limits (85dB that can be exceeded up to 100dB after a warning).

Moreover, EU iPhones have always been compliant with these French laws.

The new 14.2 Headphone Notifications cannot be blamed on French law. They are far more restrictive and intrusive than required. Apple wants them to be this restrictive and intrusive.

I wouldn't mind if I was actually using headphones... but I'm bluetoothing to my HiFi which requires the volume to be set very high on the iPhone (or very high on the amplifier which then wakes up the neighbourhood when I switch the amp to a different input).

What is absurd about this is that a device transmits audio over Bluetooth has *no* idea how many dB will be produced (or at what distance) by whatever sound-producing device or system the Bluetooth receiver is connected to - most obviously because the device will have its own volume control, its own inbuilt gain, and then there are the actual speakers/headphones and the distance at which the listener sits to take into account.

[I'm not being critical of William's post, just the absurdity of a 'phone, iPod or whatever attempting to limiting the dB produced by the whole audio system at the other end of the ether].