Turn off volume turned down on iPhone

This all started back in 2006 because of this idiot: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4673584.stm

France has been biting at them ever since and then of course the €U wanted their piece of the Apple pie as well

To have the warning active by default makes sense and to keep popping up as it does if it’s used excessively BUT what would make more sense is to have a toggle that could switch the warning off for the rest of Europe that know how to turn the volume down if their ears start hurting instead of giving us all headaches when we’re trying to drown out the noise

This is the last iPhone I will be buying, as a motorcyclist I get 2 hours out of the phone before it starts messing around with the sound even though I have ear plugs in. I have the phone mounted on the handle bars so the temptation is there to turn it back up whilst riding. 6 points and fine if stopped by police or Death through lack of attention to road.

Ditto. I can understand if wearing earbuds, however, speakers aren’t connected to ears. I listen to sleep sounds which have cured my insomnia. My sleep cycle has been disrupted — the lack of sound wakes me up. Very frustrating. There are disclaimers for everything else.

I also have hearing loss because of a concussion — the difference in the cost of buds/speakers is exponential to hearing aids.

I am having trouble with this new feature too. I already suffer with hearing loss, 60% in my right ear. And i listen to music/podcast everyday while at work. I work in a noisy environment (composites trimmer using air tools) and i have good ear defenders to protect my already damaged hearing and they’re also Bluetooth and i can play music through them, they’re already limited to protect hearing so aren’t particularly loud, and now every 20 mins my phone keeps turning down my volume to the point where I can’t hear it... this feature is stupid and I can’t see a way to disable it.

I've been having this issue lately too. I use a simple Bluetooth Aux adapter to listen to music in my car, and I keep the volume all the way up on my phone and use the car volume knob for actual volume control, but my iPhone keeps halving the volume level, and it is really starting to **** me off. If I wasn't so irritated, I wouldn't be here writing this, but I feel like Apple is treating its user base like children, not allowing to turn off this so-called feature. I disabled all Noise settings on my Apple Watch, but it keeps happening. I think it's a great feature concept, but clearly has been implemented very poorly. GIVE ME A FREAKING ON/OFF TOGGLE. I paid over a thousand dollars for my iPhone 12 Pro Max, so it should be exactly as I want it. If I want that on, I should have the option, but I should also have the option to turn it off. I should not be forced to have enabled a "feature" that doesn't properly work and consistently ruins my user experience. It's incredibly patronizing. ALL YOU NEED IS AN ON/OFF TOGGLE, HOW HARD IS THAT, APPLE? COME ON.

Apologies for being responsible for any grill blockages. When I'm done listening to music, I usually 'dab' the Blu-Tack on the grill; it removes everything that might be left behind.

I wanted to add one thing: If your phone is placed on a surface that is vibrating with the speakers' sound (e.g. on the same surface the speakers themselves are on) then you must also consider that the surface vibration will effectively sound 'loud' to the phone's inbuilt mic; it will be reaching the mic not through the (blocked) grill, but through the phone's body.

It is for this reason that, even when totally blocking the grill, you can STILL find that iOS detects loud sound and lowers the music volume on the phone.

No you weren’t responsible, I’d already tried it before reading your message! Yes, I had it on a different surface that was vibration free but worth pointing out. Just to add... When I go into the health app (in headphone settings) the phone basically tells me the volume it thinks it is set at. Basically, 3 presses down from max vol will give a reading of 90db. The phone will then turn down after about 4hours. There is a different time limit (until notification comes up) depending on what volume setting I have my phone on. Max volume on my phone and I get the notification after about 24 minutes. It doesn’t matter if I have the volume turned right down on my Bluetooth stereo it just goes of the phone. I really don’t know what Apple have tried to do here. It’s a complete mess! 

Good to know I didn’t cause any issues!

That certainly does sound like a mess. I’m sure it looked good on paper - in real life though? Not so much.

The new Apple cans require iOS 14.3; given their launch date, we’re in line for 14.3 in the coming days. I hope to all that is holy that they’ve fixed the 14.2 auto volume limiting nonsense in 14.3!

What you said about different time limits for different (supposed) dB values lines up with the Hearing Health spiel in the Health app. I see what they’re trying to do, but I still fundamentally disagree with unilaterally altering users' phones' volumes.

As one other poster here said, this can happen while driving/riding/operating other types of machinery, and it can potentially be dangerous in the here and now - rather than simply dangerous to hearing health in the long term.

Yes I can maybe see what they’ve tried to do. For me (although maybe not for some) it would be fine if it just applied to ‘headphones’. So is that a bug or have they intended this?! That’s what I want to know but it doesn’t seem to be conclusive. When I listen at work I’m nowhere near my speakers and am wearing hearing protection. Makes no sense 🙄

My understanding is not a bug but a EU law. Apparently same issues on Android, so not an Apple decision/fault. Said this, I’m really not happy that I have to be told how loud I can listen to my music. If I want to fuck up my earring is my problem only.

Having the option on by default should be enough to satisfy the €U and protect the people that would need it. Being able to disable it permanently would satisfy the customers, the people that actually spend their money to buy these devices

The challenge with forcing this on people (some regions can disable the automatic volume reduction but not here in the States) is that the iphone is not smart enough to differentiate between headphones and bluetooth speakers. e.g., if i am under the car working on it and Apple decides to turn the speaker down, i have to crawl out from under it, wipe the grease off my hands, crawl back under it, and then rinse and repeat in like 15 minutes.

This can be a safety issue as well, since it is distracting and the iPhone makes a person lose focus when the volume is reduced right in the middle of bench pressing with a lot of weight on the bar. You are in the middle of a set and the volume all of a sudden drops to almost inaudible and you are thinking about what happened to the stupid phone instead of focusing on controlling the bar and weight.

If the Apple response is, well you should have bought an Apple speaker because the phone IS smart enough to recognize that, then i would seriously look at an Android phone next time.

Not only do I not own ear pods, I can’t use use any kind of ear bud device because they’re too big for my ears.

I only use iPhone music in my car via Bluetooth. As a result of this notification taking away my ability to choose the volume of what I listen to, I either have to handle my phone whilst driving to adjust the sound, which is illegal, or I have to use the physical volume control on my car’s stereo.

This sounds like a simple solution, but no. Increasing the car’s audio only distorts what is playing, creating feedback interference and giving your playback device really poor quality.

Its now unusable to me and my drive to and from work is made a little bit worse every day.

NOT EVERYONE USES EAR PHONES. Apple needs to implement the ability to define what kind of Bluetooth device the phone is currently paired with.

What irks me is that I rarely even use headphones. I use Bluetooth speakers 98% of the time, why? Because I have severe tinnitus that requires me to have white noise going constantly, especially at night when I’m trying to sleep.

When apple makes the decision, sometimes in the middle of the night when the chime WAKES ME UP, to turn down the volume on my Bluetooth speaker (NOT HEADPHONES) I use to sleep? The humming of my tinnitus comes roaring back and I have to fiddle with my phone to get everything back to the volume I need TO SLEEP.

I am hardly an edge case. Please do away with this useless nanny feature.

The irony that this is coming from someone who has actually ruined my hearing from listening to music too loud isn’t lost on me. My iPod in the 00s probably didn’t help but now apple wants to take away my therapeutic use of their products to soothe the issue their older products likely caused. LOL