Notification volume on my iPhone is very low

Thanks for reaching out varahala,

It sounds like your notifications are coming quieter than you'd expect. We can help.

First let's follow these steps to Adjust the volume on iPhone. Then, to turn up your notification volume go to Settings > Sounds & Haptics > Ringer and Alerts and drag the volume slider to the level you want it at.

If you have the Change with Buttons option enabled, you may also want to turn that off to lock the Ringer and Alerts volume. When Change With Buttons is enabled, anytime you adjust the volume for anything, the Ringer and Alerts volume will go to that level.

Turning off Change with Buttons will lock the Ringer and Alerts volume to the same level no matter what you adjust the volume to for other audio.

Hope that helps.

Take care.

Found a somewhat unsatisfactory solution. After turning off bluetooth the alerts are at the expected level. For me , Bluetooth always appears to be searching, with the spinning disk there all the time, thought it connects fine to known devices. It may be related to 'MFI Hearing Devices', under Accessability>Hearing Devices, which also shows a spinning disk whenever Bluetooth is switched on.

Hope this helps, though a better fix is obviously needed

If your Bluetooth is connected to something, in my case, an external speaker, the notification volumes are much lower. Once I disconnected the bluetooth speaker, the notification volumes were much louder. (iPhone 12 Pro Max)

I just fixed my phone from doing this, check the sounds and haptics part of settings, my slider was set all the way silent and I did not set it to be like that, I’m little hard of hearing so I always had it set to the highest. I hope this works for others as well

Go to Settings, Sounds & Haptics, change the slider under “RINGTONE AND ALERTS” to preferred volume, and (if enabled) turn off “Change with Buttons.” What that does is when you turn down the volume on your phone, it will also turn down alerts and ringtones. And when you turn volume up, vice versa.

Maybe try the following - worked for me. Go to Settings/Face ID and Passcode, scroll to and turn off Attention-Aware Features. Hope it works. Found the tip here https://youtu.be/X92s9H5se6Y

A soft reset cured my problem! Press top volume button , then bottom volume button then on /off switch. Do not slide 'off' just wait for screen to go black. The phone will restart and the volume is restored. So relieved.

Head to Settings > Face ID & Passcode, scroll down, and toggle off Attention-Aware Features it its turned on. Hopefully, this helps!

The disconnection of bluetooth devices worked for me. Obviously it's not a solution and is a workaround but the quiet notifications were driving me mad so grateful for anything to help. I disconnected the bluetooth earphones I was connected to and all is fine again with the volume on imessage and other notifications

Hi, I have this problem as well. One thing I have found is that if you have an Apple Watch, you only get message alerts (assuming you have iMessage enabled) on your watch, if the phone is locked. Check that the tone level on your watch is turned up.

go to settings>sounds and haptics>ring tone and alerts. At the top should be a volume slider. Push it up to the top.

Sorry folks, it seems I spoke too soon about using the custom ring tone. It did work for some apps, but I noticed not for the Microsoft Apps Notifications on my iPhone. My company uses Outlook and Teams and the notification volume in these apps is still very low and it is not using the custom ring tone I downloaded and selected for use. I also noticed there is no option to select a notification ringtone within the Microsoft apps. The only option within the Microsoft Apps is to turn the notification sound on or off. Still looking for a resolution for the Microsoft Notification Volume. With that being said the new notification ring tone I downloaded is working fine for the apple apps on my iphone, volume is loud and clear.

FIX FOR PHILLIPS HEARING AIDS

I wear late model Phillips hearing aids from Costco (March 2025), and discovered a setting under “accessibility” that was not turned on: “hearing devices \ play system sounds”.

I turned it on and now the notification sounds are coming through to my hearing aids just fine.

I downloaded a custom ringtone and followed the instructions on this site.

I used it for all my notifications and I can hear my notifications now.

https://www.howtogeek.com/248489/how-to-add-custom-ringtones-to-your-iphone/

Hope it helps.

The text and notifications tone volumes are too low! This is a software bug, and Apple either has deprioritized the resolution, or doesn’t know how to fix it. Oh, and for the record, no solutions for this issue work. Including a full factory reset, or even replacing the device. It’s almost as if it’s caused by an app or iCloud setting.

Text alert tones are broken on most pro models, and have been on mine for years. New iPad Pro out of the box, m4, 1TB, top of the line, iPadOS 18.2, text tones at 100% volume, sound level out the speaker is about 16dB. (Whisper quiet) Almost inaudible with normal hearing from 500mm. I can only hear the tone with my ear flush to the speaker at 100%. At 30% a child can’t hear it. At 10% an amplifier at 100db gain can’t detect any sound. why? because the speakers are emitting no vibration at this level. Oh, and the units at the Apple Store perform much better, but not loud enough. So, my guess is it’s a few compounding factors causing this. My iPhone 12 is like 100x louder. Apple, please open a CAPA, you’re losing customers. Please fix this bug!