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I am Micah Sargent and I have really been trying lately to listen in to what people, well, you know, with their permission, what people are saying, what people are complaining about, what issues they're having, what confusion they have about specific parts of their iPhones, their iPads, their Macs, etc. And so for the next few episodes, I really want to try to cover typical frustrations that people are having regarding their devices. So one issue that I have seen experience, and it's actually an issue that I have had myself as well, was something that I solved recently and it has to do with the loudness of the sound coming out of my Bluetooth connected devices. And depending on what your settings are, how they work, what you have going on for you, you may find that you get a better experience once you make changes to the settings that we're going to be talking about today. So let's head over to iOS and much of this would be the same on IPADOs as well as we take a look at sounds and haptics. So here we are on iOS and the first thing we're going to do is tap on the settings app. From here we need to scroll down until we find sounds and haptics. Now we're going to go through these different settings together so that you can understand truly what you are able to change within this area of the phone. So a lot of people think, you know, this is the place where I just change my ringtone. There's so much more that happens here, first and foremost, particularly on newer devices that no longer have that little switch on the side. This is one of the places you can go to turn on silent mode. I happen to have silent mode turned on at all times. It is just a way to keep the phone from making noise throughout the day. I just get vibrations on my phone and on my watch, unless there's special notifications that need to make sound. So silent mode just makes it so that it does not play ringtones. And alerts and system sounds throughout the day. And of course, you can use the button on the side that used to be the sleep wake button to be able to. Now it's called the action button to be able to change that area to turn on and off silent mode. I have mine again on at all times. It does not affect alarms. A lot of people think it does and therefore they don't make use of this feature. It does not affect alarms. Alarms will still play. So that's something to be aware of. The next option here shows show in status bar. Mine is currently toggled off. If you have this turned on. What it does is it shows that you have silent mode enabled or disabled in your status bar, which is the area in the top right corner of your phone. So turning this on will then put the little icon that lets you know that silent mode is turned on. Because I always have mine on and I don't really toggle it between. I don't need to have it in status bar. They don't need to have it in the status bar because I don't make use of it. Now a new option here in the sounds and haptics settings has come by way of the iPhone and iPad's ability to do more local recording on device. So now you are able to change the input on your phone. What does that mean? It means that by default, if I were to go into voice memos or another app that does audio recording or an app that does audio calling like FaceTime or Zoom or one of those apps, it would be by default it would be the iPhone microphone that is listening to my voice. If I were to have my AirPods in right now, it would switch to my AirPods as the default input. But we can tap on this and we can actually change it between automatic, which will kind of switch between them, and in this case, iPhone microphone, because those are the only options we have available. If I had another device connected to this phone that was able to serve as a microphone, that option would show up as well. This is particularly handy if you have, say, headphones that you want to use to hear what's going on in a conversation, but you want to use the built in microphone or some other input option as a way of having your phone hear your voice or other sound around you. So having this input section, we're super happy about it. Celebrate good times. Come on. The next section is all about ringtones and alerts and this is important as well because this is a setting that depending on how you have it set up, is going to make a lot of a difference. So by default, I can change the level of volume of ringtone and alerts that would play if I didn't have silent mode enabled. So this is going to make my text tones louder. Incoming calls would be louder, any sort of chime or notification, or any of those would be louder. Based on how I move the slider in this section, it's currently set for me at three quarters. If I brought it all the way up again, they would be that loud. Now, the next section is very important because it says change with buttons. Right now, the way for me to change the volume of ringtones and alerts is by going into this page. That means that the buttons on the side, the volume up button and the volume down button, do not have an impact on ringtones and alerts. They only have an impact on media that is playing through my device. I like it that way. Some people want to be able to change both their ringtone and alert sounds and their media volume all at once. Some people like to have it separated. That's why Apple gave this option to let it not be changed by the buttons on the side. So that way you could, for example, turn up the volume on something you're trying to listen to without having then your ringtone being super loud at the same time. And maybe you want to have your ringtone and your text tones make sound, but just be very quiet so that it's not disturbing other people. If you then went to watch something on, you know, an Instagram reel and you suddenly couldn't hear it and you turned it up and then it's turning up your ringtone as well, that's where that's perplexing annoying. So that's why that change with buttons option is there. That's what that means. Again, I have mine turned off. I don't ever really want to hear a ringtone or an alert in the first place. So I have no reason to have that set to change with the button. The next section is haptics. This is the built in sort of vibrations that take place on your phone. So feeling those little blips and blops and buzzes and twips and everything in between, that is what this is all about. So right now the question is, when will haptics play on my device? Well, I want them to always play so that if I did have silent mode turned off, it would still, while playing a sound out loud, also vibrate my phone. You can set it so that it's only playing haptics. In silent mode, if you do toggle between the two. So that way, when you have silent mode turned off, meaning that you have full volume, then it is, or, you know, your notifications and your. Your ringtones making sound, then what it'll do is it will play those out without vibrating. You can also say, don't play in silent mode, which means that if silent mode is turned on, not only do I not want you to make sound for my incoming texts and calls, I also don't want you to vibrate my phone. I want you to do nothing. And then there's never play, which says, regardless of whether we're in silent mode or in some other, you know, mode, do not disturb whatever. Just don't ever play a. Don't ever do a vibration. A haptic. I have mindset to always play. I love haptics. That's how I know that something has, you know, happened on my phone that I need to check while always keeping silent mode turned on. This next section, we're not going to go through it. It's very easy to understand that these are your settings for your ringtone, your text tone, your voicemail, your mail, all of the kind of basic default alerts that are not specific to specific apps. So you can change what sounds are made from those different for those different reasons. Next is keyboard feedback. Now, this says that when I am tapping on my keyboard, I'm okay with sound playing, and I want it to make little vibrations as I'm typing. I like to have the haptics. I technically don't want the sound unless I have silent mode turned off. In the rare occasion when I have silent mode turned off, I actually do like to hear the little sounds that play. That may not be for you. That's why you would turn off, turn off sound. But I definitely have those haptics turned on. The lock sound is currently turned on, which would say that if we were to lock the device and I had silent mode turned off, you would hear a little as it locks the phone and unlocks the phone from pressing the side button. And then system haptics, which basically says that there are different parts of your iOS experience that will make vibrations. And so do you want those to make those vibrations when those opportunities present themselves? Now, another aspect of this to understand is that the iPad does not have a haptic engine built into it. Arguably, that is because these devices are bigger, and therefore it would probably require more than one haptic engine to be able to properly make the necessary vibrations for you to feel them. Therefore, that's not the case in an iPad. So you wouldn't have those same haptics controls on the iPad that you do on the iPhone. Now this next section is very important because it starts to talk about some of the settings that I have heard people complain about that when they're listening to something and they turn it up, it's really not as loud as they were expecting. Chances are at some point you may have adjusted these settings. The first one says for the built in speaker, what is the volume limit setting? This lets you on your device toggle on or toggle off a limit for the maximum volume able to come out of your iPhone speaker. Here's the cool thing. This limit does not affect phone calls, facetime calls, emergency calls and alerts, ringtones, alarms, system sounds, or find my sounds. All of those will still play at the maximum volume without any impact. And that's for good reason. Those are the things that you want to be loud enough for you to hear them no matter what. But this does say songs, music and other media, you know, that's not going to blast through your speaker for the sake of, you know, being able to hear it. So if we toggle this on, we can say that the max volume that is able to come out of the speaker is 60% of the technical capacity or capability of the speaker. It goes all the way up to 90% because obviously we want to have some limit if we're turning this on. So we don't set it to 100 because then there's no limit. So I'm going to toggle this off. I have that turned off because one thing that I like to do is if I'm listening to an audiobook and I'm, you know, in the like brushing my teeth or something, that thing's going, you know, in my ears. So being able to hear the audiobook over, that is nice. So there may be different tasks that you're doing where you do need it to be loud enough. That's why I have that turned off. But it can be a good thing to turn on if you are. If you find yourself, you know, not necessarily paying attention to or many cases. This is kind of a guardian making this choice to protect the hearing of a child or, you know, someone that they're taking care of.