Blink security app - notification sound changed since IOS 17 update

My specific problem has been that since upgrading to IOS 17, ALL of my app notification sounds changed to a short, low volume "blip" sound, not just Blink. Today, after trying to change a few settings, all my notification sounds returned, and Blink now sounds like a more substantial "beh-roop" sound (kinda like a thick liquid drop). Not exactly sure what specifically fixed the problem, but here's what I did in case you wanted to try.

I double checked all the usual suspect Notifications and Sounds & Haptics settings to make sure they were set correctly and found nothing wrong. Then in Sounds & Haptics, I changed the ring tones for Text Tone and New Mail, and then set them back to default in order to test the ringtones and hopefully reset them. Then I went into Notifications and into the various individual apps whose notification sounds were not working correctly and changed their tones and then set them all back to default. I think the last app I changed was the Mail (Safari) app's sound under Notification, Customize Notifications, selected my mail provider's account name under Accounts, and noticed my Alerts setting was toggled off and I toggled that back on. Within a few minutes I received both an email and Blink notification that sounded normal. Again, I'm not sure what specifically fixed the problem, but in my case, it seems it may have been resetting the apps whose notifications were sounding distorted and turning on the Mail app's Alert on-off toggle that had been turned off during the IOS 17 install.

Your mileage may vary.... Good luck.

tried some of the fixes on here with no luck. But one guy commented that you could have Siri announce your notifications. I followed the instructions I found on line and now my phone will announce my blink notifications over my phone speaker. I don't even have to look at the phone, it announces which camera it detects motion from. You can set it for any app or just the blink app.

Just go to setting, accessibility, then go to Siri near the bottom, turn on announce notifications on speaker, click the arrow for announce notifications, turn on announce notifications at the top and choose the apps that you want it to announce 

The Blink cameras use the default notification. If you update your iPhone to IOS 17.2 then go to settings, sound and haptics. Down at the bottom, change the default tone there.

Just did some additional troubleshooting and I don’t know if this will work for everyone- I have a iphone13 Pro Max and the latest update. I went to Settings > Sounds and Haptics > turned the Ringtone and Alert volume up just a bit > AND UNCHECKED the Change With Buttons option and it worked! My first iPhone so I’m still learning and don’t know if it helps you but it worked for me! Good luck everyone!

SiBee wrote:

I was really excited about my blink doorbell, but it is absolutely pointless with my iPhone as it currently is. Personally I wish it behaved more like a long phone ring notification at full volume. A near silent short ping is less than useless.

Only Blink can, at this point, change the sound. App developers do have the ability to use sounds of their own choosing. For example, I have a Ring Doorbell. It does not (and never has) use the default notification sound. So, I suggest you provide feedback to them.

Even though Ring has a pretty loud tone, I still opted to get a secondary device that plugs into a wall outlet, connects to the same WiFi as the Ring and sounds a very loud noise. This is helpful when my phone is off, on silent or in another part of the house. I don't know if Blink offers something similar but if they do, I highly recommend getting one.

Give this a try;

go into settings

navigate to Sounds & Haptics

make sure volume is up the whole way

scroll down to Default Alerts, tap on Default Alerts

scroll down to Classic

choose any notification sound from the list

navigate back to home screen

turn phone off briefly/then back on

using the above steps, I can now actually hear my Blink notifications

Hope this helps

I had this problem on an iPhone 11 and an iPhone 14. Very frustrating! If you go to settings, sounds and haptics, scroll down, and you will see default alerts. Click on that and you can change your Blink notification. However, on my brothers iPhone SE, he does not have the default alert settings. I have no idea how he can change his blink notification. I hope this helps somebody because it sure helped my frustration.

Apple fixed the issue on ~25 Dec 2023. In iOS 17.2.1, select Settings, Sounds and Haptics and Default Alerts. You can now customize third party apps. Thanks Apple for listening to us!

This could be the answer. Update 17.2.1 has installed a button called Default Alert Tone under the Sound/haptics section. It’s defaulted to the pathetic chord which I changed to the Tri-tone which was the tone when I installed Blink. Jack the volume up and down and keep it on high. It seems to be back to normal. Don’t know if I should let Blink now about this because they really don’t care, just want my money.

I have had 2 responses from Blink in the last 2 days still blaming Apple . Clearly when you can change the default tone with 17.2 and it doesn’t change the Blink App tone , it’s a Blink issue . I spoke to a Senior Advisor this morning from Apple who agrees Blink needs to fix their App , he said for all of us to send this issue to Apple./Feedback and they will pay attention and when they see it’s not Apple they will reach out to Blink to try to solve this so everyone who didn’t get an alert tone change once they got 17.2 and reset default alert tones please send feedback !!!

I had the same issue and was told by Blink customer support the only solution was to use an android phone. However, much better solution I found was to use the Motion detection alert that can be enabled using the Alexa app on any Alexa device, and that volume can be set as loud as you want. Now my Alexa echo dot is my blink camera notification system.

I tried some of the fixes on here with no luck. But one guy commented that you could have Siri announce your notifications. I followed the instructions I found on line and now my phone will announce my blink notifications over my phone speaker. I don’t even have to look at the phone, it announces which camera it detects motion from. You can set it for any app or just the blink app. Just go to setting, accessibility, then go to Siri near the bottom, turn on announce notifications on speaker, click the arrow for announce notifications, turn on announce notifications at the top and choose the apps that you want it to announce for.

After reading this entire thread, because I have the issue of not getting any blink notifications since I purchased my new Iphone 15 Plus a couple of weeks ago, and trying all the suggestions noted here, none of which worked, I found the answer on Amazon's Blink forum. I just did this, and voila, my Blink notifications are back in full force! they are not audible, but the popup notifications that I used to get before I upgraded my phone. Here is the solution that worked for me, posted on 11/7/23:

"I just got off the phone with Blink support. We discovered that you have to go into settings on the phone, go to focus, do not disturb and add Blink to the apps allowing notifications. I get sound now but it is very faint. I suppose now it is an Apple problem? I don't see any place where you can increase the volume of the notification sound."

Hope this helps someone else.

[Edited by Moderator]

Have you all tried going into settings, sounds, default alerts and changing this back to tri-tone from the new default rebound in ios17?