How to turn off Headphone Safety on iPhone

Threatening other users you'll go Android get's you nothing. Apple isn't here, so your threat goes nowhere. But be advised, Android is implementing the same functions on their phones. So where does that leave you?

Find me one Android phone that forcefully reduces volume midway listening and does not allow the user to switch that function off and I will quit this forum. Give me a screenshot if you can. But you can’t because as I said time and time again Android even on the latest version and UI doesn’t have an annoyance like that.

What are the parameters for this?

We know from current EU owners on Samsung forums that:

1) On Samsung phones, when the volume limit is reached, the phone drops the volume to 0.

2) The option to shut off the maximum volume limit does not exist on EU phones without rooting the phone.

Unless those posters are completely mistaken.

And that is your interpretation of those posters. I don’t know of a single Samsung user who is experiencing this issue in the same region Apple is implementing this. Unless you own a Samsung phone or personally know a friend who does that, you can’t make a convincing argument here. And mind you I have read posts in those links you shared earlier time and time again and that is certainly not what they are saying over there.

I am skeptical of the relevance of that Samsung-thread. It is from summer 2020 and has three people complaining that their phone volume drops to zero, that is, going completely silent. That sounds like a bug or malfunction, and the Samsung-rep on the thread seems to regard it as such, too.

If this was a widespread and intentional feature in the Android/Samsung-sphere, I think it would have gotten a lot more attention by now. I have searched for this in several languages and found no indication for this. Incidentally, there were also a few complaints of the volume going all the way up automatically - a bug I have experienced on my own Samsung Android, but which stopped after a reboot.

My Samsung-phone is an EU-model from 2020, and it implements an EU-volume limit the same way I have seen in all my EU-phones over the past decade, including the iPhone before 14.2: if while pressing the volume-up-button the volume slider reaches a certain threshold, the volume will stop increasing and a warning pops up. Once the user acknowledges the warning, the volume can be increased a bit further. Repeating this (going back below the threshold and up again) will not retrigger the warning over the next 20 hours of listening.

There are plenty of complaints about this type of implementation, too, and in many phones it cannot be turned off, but it is a lot less troublesome than the iPhone Headphone Notifications. I think it is important to keep such differences in mind when searching for these issues on the web, to avoid conflating different policies and implementations. That is not to say that something equivalent the Headphone Notifications will not appear on Android, but I think as of today this has not happened yet.(?)

This is what I received from a senior advisor from Apple:

Your support Advisor has a follow-up message for you.

Headphone notifications are mandatory and cannot be turned off on new

devices shipping with iOS 14.2 in Canada, the European Union, Israel,

South Africa, Turkey, Ukraine, the United Arab Emirates, the United

Kingdom, and the United States.

For previously purchased devices

in mandated countries or regions, customers can turn this feature on or

off. However, if a customer erases and re-installs their device after

iOS 14.2 ships, the Headphone Notifications feature will be on by

default and can't be turned off.

Bottom line: We're forced to live under a audio nanny.

Whilst I appreciate the posting of this the actual statement from Apple isn’t true.

My 11 pro didn’t ship with 14.2, I upgraded it.

I didn’t default and restore.

Yet I still can’t turn it off.

And before anyone says, yes I have given feedback. 🙄

The only time this stupid feature activates is when in my car. I turn the phone volume all the way up so I can control the volume with my car stereo. So even if my volume is at 2 the phone thinks it’s at 100. Smartphone too dumb to tell a car from headphones. Fix it!

If a senior support advisor believes that is how the feature set should have been implemented -- that an existing device should not have been affected, then there is yet another defect I can report. I did not buy a new device and so it sounds like I should be able to opt out but cannot.

In terms of a new device I can vote with my feet when the time comes and if nothing has changed - I am increasingly less enamoured by the imusic ecosystem after so many years of it just working , so I am sure I will get over it and will have either converted my original library to another format or moved to a different streaming service by the time I need a new phone. It started going downhill when the airport express was taken off the market if I am honest, and those devices die if we don't nurse them back to health now and then. My music library is my main lock in to the iPhone ecosystem and my sons 'droid phone is definitely very cool.

Comedy thought for everyone on the potential health benefits for those rebellious teenagers : the number of notifications you get has just gamified listening. "Hey look how many I got today -- how many did you get ?" "Dude .. I got more than you .. try harder tomorrow ...". Except I'm sure they don't say Dude any more.

This proves to me that this “feature” is not imposed in these countries because it’s a law or regulation but actually the lack of regulation. Because I know very well that Turkey is not part of EU and we have not enacted any regulation or law with regards to headphone volumes.

Apple followed a similar route with EKG reading in Apple watches in Turkey and Israel until they received regulatory approvals. Now that feature is also available here.

Using Airpods , if i turn off the Reduce loud sounds button i get turned down every 20 mins . If I set it to 100 its 90 mins . 90 then its 3 hours ....85 and i cant here my airpods outside ....Now then , I have some wired KZ pro headphones (£20 on amazon ) . I can set it to 90 and it is as loud as the airpods with no restriction ( better sound to as they are hi-res )they dont turn down as it states 40 hours listening time ..... I can only conclude that the phone may be sending 90 db to your headphones/speakers but they are not converting that to what you hear , making a mokery out of what Apple thinks is safe for you .....

Dear Apple support team,

I understand Apple's concerns with our hearing, but this obligatory safety setting is too simplistic. I am a motorcycle rider that enjoys listening to music while riding. Because the wind passing by my helmet produces high-frequency noise that is known to damage my inner ear, I always ride with special earplugs that have filters for this type of noise. However, these filters also reduce the volume over the complete frequency range. Therefore, to hear my music, I must increase the volume of my iPhone too a level that is clearly above the normal safety limits (which I also experienced myself one time when I forgot my earplugs ...). In sum, I'm very well able to take care of my own hearing's health, and I would like to ask you to make this hearing safety setting optional.

can anyone confirm that it’s the line out level it’s checking against versus using the microphone? I am thinking of getting a couple cheap 3.5mm to Bluetooth receivers and using those and letting my speakers use the audio aux in. I suspect the issue is it thinks it knows what the db is based on the volume level

That’s the whole point of this thread. Any iPhone activated with 14.2 or later already on it in the US and other locations do not allow you to disable headphone notifications and automatic volume reduction per local regulation. The problem is many Bluetooth speakers are identified by iOS as a headphone and Apple acts like to treat us like children and turn down the volume for us. It appears that the volume detection isn’t by microphone but by line level out which means devices where you need higher levels to send sound get registered as high headphone levels and gets turned down.

Health->Hearing->Show More Data Towards the bottom you can see by bluetooth device how much they have contributed to the data set and you can even filter the data by device. So allowing me to toggle a blue tooth device as a “speaker”. Would work. It’s obvious it’s keeping track of the individual devices so I would suggest allowing you to go to Bluetooth devices and setting flag that marks that device as a Bluetooth speaker would allow the health app to filter that device from counting towards your hear budget.