How to turn off Headphone Safety on iPhone

No EU law forces a supplier to turn down a users volume. This is disgusting from Apple. I have been loyal for over a decade but this is nothing short of Big Brother power, controlling and a clear example of a boardroom pulling puppet strings.

I use BT headphone on 10k runs and the annoyance and disturbance this causes mid run and effect on my tempo is enough to make me put my Apple Watch in the bin.

Apple have crossed one too many UX boundaries on this and hiding behind vague laws is pathetic.

Shame on them.

Sort this out Apple.

Well, I just ordered a new phone from a different brand, took less time than filling out their form and waiting who knows how long (possibly even forever) to get this removed.

The issue I, as well as most other users, have with this is that this isn't a bug. It's an intentional feature. As far as I'm concerned this is comparable to when they were forcing CPU throttling on users with old batteries and not giving them an option to turn it off. And since they're only doing this in certain regions, it's unlikely they'll get slapped by a class action lawsuit like they did back then, because many of these regions do not have an official way of actually doing a CA lawsuit. It was this lawsuit that got them to change the implementation, not user feedback.

Hi guys,

To turn this off.

Settings > Screen Time > Content & Privacy Restrictions > Reduce Volume Sounds > change it from allow to don’t allow.

It also depends on the region you live in, and the current restrictions in regards to Covid-19. Which is why Apple has hidden this feature.

Kind regards,

Jack

Try going with 100dB for 24 minutes. Choosing reduce loud sounds won’t do anything for you unless you set it to 75dB. At 95dB it takes 1,5 hours, 90dB 4 hours, 80dB 40 hours to hit the threshold. And believe me you will unless you constantly clear headphone level data from health like me.

alanah178 wrote:

This feature has almost caused several car accidents because it’s randomly turned my music right down while I’m driving!? So dangerous!

No, the feature did not almost cause the accident. Your unwillingness to pay attention to your driving rather than the volume of your music did.

lobsterghost1 wrote:

I was going to respond to that one, but found it so preposterous it didn't merit a response. As if lower volume while driving a car could be dangerous.

As if music were required to drive the car.... ;-)

urbncwby76 wrote:

Seriously Apple must be paying some of you guys a good fortune to spend all your time here around the clock, responding to and discrediting any argument against Apple. They just need to duplicate more of you to resist against all these folks.

Telling people they should pay more attention to the road and less to their electronic devices has nothing to do with Apple. It has to do with responsible adult behavior.

People get you don't like the way Apple has done things. What lots of people posting here don't seem to understand is that no one in this thread can change that. You need to take it up with Apple. Continuing to post complaints here is a waste of time. However, it's your time to waste.

Man, this feature is horrible. I’m getting tired of this culture of someone else knows best how to use my own devices.

I’ve never used headphone but this turns down the volume on my Bluetooth devices and when I run a 1/8” cord to a line in port on a stereo... what a sham

I really hope this isn't locked to the model and serial number of phone. Im in Jersey and just got my 12 max pro in the mail from T-Mobile. According to this link my phone is the Canadian model (A) and not the US model (LL).

This is a real danger if you’re using your phone on Bluetooth in your car... it keeps turning the volume down while I’m driving and you can’t set the volume back up unless you close the notification making you look at your phone, close the notification and then increase back the volume on your phone.

Noticed this when I went back into gym out of lockdown today. As I own Aftershockz bone conductive headphones with eq adjusted to indoors with ear plugs in full volume is not as loud as what standard headphones could go. Reducing the sound on these makes them very quiet but looks like I can just turn the volume back up however this will be annoying if it frequently does this.

Agree... I attempted to open a support case.

My iphone 12 pro max in blue with 256GB of storage has this issue. My wife's iphone 12 pro max in blue with 256GB of storage does not have this issue. Both order and delivered on the same days and to the same address. Both setup on the same day at the same time following the same basic steps.

Apple response is that my wife's phone is the one that is "broken".

I have more than one bluetooth device (one of them being a several hundred dollar Cardo helmet system for my motorcycle) that are useless now. They are made to have the phone think the volume is all the way up when the device is connect and then you control the volume withe the device (in the case of the helmet system, in the case of my car adaptor with the radio volume knob). No audiobooks, no music, no spoken driving directions when I am on the bike. I can clear to history but the phone thinks that this device is in the category that means every 2 hours (or a little less) the issue comes back. sigh...

And, the person I get to talk to (supposed to be the highest level person customers are allowed to talk to) understands but can do nothing nor let me talk to anyone else. Engineering doesn't give a s**t basically.

And, I also agree... my normal Jaybird Tarah Pro headphones do have the volume controlled with the phone. But, I also listen to a lot of audiobooks and they are not ever recorded as loud as music. So, if the proper sound level is about 60% with music it is likely with an audiobook I would have to set to phone on about 80% for the same sound level.

Apple literally wants to treat us like little kids but they are too stupid to set the system up to account for differences in connected devices and audio files (local or streamed; from their service or another).

The regulations are world wide, apple only chose to adhere to them this year.

Israel also follows the same regulations, it appears to be a new internationally standard for all phones.

All phones will be have this feature forced upon them once they perform a system restore at any point in time after having updated to 14.2 regardless of what iPhone it is.

i can’t blame apple for following regulations, it’s out of their control, the government establishes these measures, not apple.

however we should hold apple accountable for the implementation of this feature, we should voice that the feature needs to be reworked in a different way which isn’t as intrusive, which doesn’t remind you ever 20 minutes.

Also, we should see about putting this in parental controls, as most of us adults already have sustained hearing damage thus far, this feature is a little too late.

[Edited by Moderator]

Hello, the official response I received by apple is that the settings was rolled out, and it would only take effect once the phone was restored.

if anyone who has the radio button allowing them to turn it off right now is willing to try and let us know if it disappears it would be much appreciated.

[Edited by Moderator]

As I said, this happened to my phone when I upgraded to to 14.2.1. To answer your question, no I will not ask my wife to restore her phone. It literally takes three days to get everything back on her phone.