iPhone 5 alerts sound not working

I recently bought a 16GB iPhone 5. When I have the volume on (not in mute) my alerts (text messages, mail) don't make a sound, yet my calls do. Is this a bug in the software? Does anyone else have this problem?

iPhone 5, iOS 6.0.1

Posted on Nov 14, 2012 8:46 AM

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Jan 10, 2013 8:42 PM in response to osieniewicz

Hi- something like this happened to me. I found the answer in the post below. To save you the clicks, there is a mute button/ lever on the left hand side of the phone that you might want to check. ("Left" when phone is oriented such that you are looking at the screen, such that the power button is "up" on the right hand side and the menu/ Siri button is facing front).


The mute button/ lever is the first button on the upper left hand side of the phone; you may need to move your phone's protector to see & access it. You'll know the mute button has been activated when a red line is visible. It becomes visible when the mute button/lever is pushed down, (towards the back of the phone). Flip the button/ level forward, so that it is pointing towards the top of your screen, and your ringers and alerts will once again ring.


I discovered that when this button/ lever was activated and my ringers & alerts were muted, my alarm clock ringer was still audible, which I think is a pretty nifty fail-safe on this feature. You can see the original Q&A suggestion by clicking link below.


https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3650283

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Jan 12, 2013 4:36 PM in response to jeandra

The Mute switch was the first thing I looked at. I have only had this phone for 2 hours and already there is an issue? I checked the mute, turned the sound up & down, looked in the sound prferences, did a restart, and a hard restart, still nothing! Also plugging & unplugging the headset didn't work either!

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Jan 13, 2013 1:12 PM in response to Power Brent

Just got my iphone5 and can see that I will be using this support community alot! My alerts quit working and I checked everything. I just did a shut down (held the button on the top of phone) and waited a few seconds and turned it back on and everything went to back to normal.

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Jan 13, 2013 3:12 PM in response to Power Brent

Today the situation repeated. Then my roommate said that he could hear my game I was playing on my phone. My iPhone continued routing all sound (even ringtones) to our Apple TV until I quit YouTube from the background. I'm not sure why it would be different from my old iPhone 4, but this seems like it may have been the cause.

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Feb 11, 2013 5:59 PM in response to osieniewicz

I noticed with a bluetooth sound system that when my phone is paired with it (the sound system), I CANNOT hear texts or appointment alerts (I did hear phone ring - I tested that). I must unpair the phone even when I have turned off the sound system. It seems like a drag to have to remember to 'unpair' my phone from the sound system, but I guess walking far away enough from it would do it or physically go to 'settings' and unpair it. So the fact that your sounds were going to your Apple TV, Power Brent, sounds like exactly the same scenario -- one must unpair in order to hear texts and alerts.

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Feb 19, 2013 10:31 PM in response to osieniewicz

I also found the message alerts etc don't come through the car speakers when using bluetooth.


Calls definitely come through and that works well but alerts don't come back until it is unpaired with the hands free.


Even my very old Nokia puts all alerts through the speakers in the same car with the same hands free system (built in) so what is wrong with the IPhone


On another thread someone said you should not read texts anyway in a car but you don't, Siri can read them to you but you need to know you have them before you can ask Siri to do that.


You also need to know you have received a message if you want to pull over and stop to read it.

As a business user who spends a lot of time on the road this is frankly an appalling situation and tempts me to go back to the old Nokia.


All the Siri technology etc and they stuff up something as basic as this then I find out it has been discussed on this forum for a couple of years.


All it takes is a software settings on/off option "rout alerts through blue tooth when connected" yes/no

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iPhone 5 alerts sound not working

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