iOS - Automatic Volume Adjustment

[dangegland]

Has anyone else had this:

You've been listening to music throughout the day, care-free, at a solid level.

In the early evening, you put your phone down, and go about your evening business.... all is well.

You stay up late... everyone else has already fallen asleep. The night comes to an end, you get into bed and you pick up your phone; one of your good friends has sent you link (keep it clean people). It's 2AM. You click it, and the volume plays at a level that is only suitable for a daytime rave.

Is it just me... or would anyone else expect the software to know:

- It's 2AM
- The background noise is silent
- The orientation of the user is horizontal

Instead it plays an interview / tune / whatever else at full blast? Why?

I see all this 'adaptive audio' stuff for Airpods, but is there really not a setting that exists that will auto-adjust volume in these cases?

N.B. I have another use case for contextual awareness like this that doesn't seem to exist: my wake up alarm. If it's set for 7:10, but I get out of bed at 6:50 and put my Apple Watch on and walk around the house for 20 minutes - but leave my phone upstairs - my alarm still goes off.

I would prefer to use up my family annoyance budget with things other than this.

Any help?

 

[StumpyBloke]

I don’t really know how anyone can help with this.

AFAIK it is working exactly as designed. I, for one, most certainly would not want my iPhone determining what volume it plays stuff at. I want control of that 100% of the time.

 

[dangegland]

I find that an interesting take given iOS has an option to auto-adjust the screen brightness in-line with ambient light levels.

Adjust the screen brightness and color on iPhone

On iPhone, dim the screen to extend battery life; use Night Shift, True Tone, and Dark Mode to adjust the screen for your lighting conditions.

support.apple.com

I'm essentially asking the same for sound level, thrown in with a bit of AI understanding of time.

 

[kitKAC]

I find that an interesting take given iOS has an option to auto-adjust the screen brightness in-line with ambient light levels.

Adjust the screen brightness and color on iPhone

On iPhone, dim the screen to extend battery life; use Night Shift, True Tone, and Dark Mode to adjust the screen for your lighting conditions.

support.apple.com

I'm essentially asking the same for sound level, thrown in with a bit of AI understanding of time.

Auto-adjusting the screen brightness has more to do with making your daily battery life longer.

 

[Dust-by-Monday]

You can do this with an automation shortcut

 

[dangegland]

Auto-adjusting the screen brightness has more to do with making your daily battery life longer.

It's still a technological solution to a problem. Maybe I'm the only one who's not always manually turning their phone volume down before doing anything on their phone in a quiet setting 😬 It seems like a perfectly reasonable safety mechanism to me in specific cases.

Sounds like there is no built-in feature that will help. I see an 'automation' mentioned above which I'll look into.

 

[jedimasterkyle]

Has anyone else had this:

You've been listening to music throughout the day, care-free, at a solid level.

In the early evening, you put your phone down, and go about your evening business.... all is well.

You stay up late... everyone else has already fallen asleep. The night comes to an end, you get into bed and you pick up your phone; one of your good friends has sent you link (keep it clean people). It's 2AM. You click it, and the volume plays at a level that is only suitable for a daytime rave.

Is it just me... or would anyone else expect the software to know:

- It's 2AM
- The background noise is silent
- The orientation of the user is horizontal

Instead it plays an interview / tune / whatever else at full blast? Why?

I see all this 'adaptive audio' stuff for Airpods, but is there really not a setting that exists that will auto-adjust volume in these cases?

N.B. I have another use case for contextual awareness like this that doesn't seem to exist: my wake up alarm. If it's set for 7:10, but I get out of bed at 6:50 and put my Apple Watch on and walk around the house for 20 minutes - but leave my phone upstairs - my alarm still goes off.

I would prefer to use up my family annoyance budget with things other than this.

Any help?

I've noticed that the volume on my phone auto adjusts throughout the day as well and I have not been able to find a setting to disable it.

 

[nxt3]

You can create a Shortcut automation for when you open an app and have it change the volume.

At a high level, here's an example:

When YouTube is opened:

• if current time is after 9pm
  • set volume to 10%

If you wanted to also monitor the orientation, there is a 3rd party app called Actions that gives you the ability to check for device orientation for more conditional logic on your automation.


A more global approach may be to use a Focus mode (either your current Sleep focus or a new focus for Quiet Hours) and turn that Focus Mode on at a particular time of the day and when that Focus is enabled, automate changing the volume.

 

[Dust-by-Monday]

You can create a Shortcut automation for when you open an app and have it change the volume.

At a high level, here's an example:

When YouTube is opened:

• if current time is after 9pm
  • set volume to 10%

If you wanted to also monitor the orientation, there is a 3rd party app called Actions that gives you the ability to check for device orientation for more conditional logic on your automation.


A more global approach may be to use a Focus mode (either your current Sleep focus or a new focus for Quiet Hours) and turn that Focus Mode on at a particular time of the day and when that Focus is enabled, automate changing the volume.

I wish there were a way to make a shortcut that would check to see if headphones are connected and then set the volume accordingly.

 

[dangegland]

You can create a Shortcut automation for when you open an app and have it change the volume.

At a high level, here's an example:

When YouTube is opened:

• if current time is after 9pm
  • set volume to 10%

If you wanted to also monitor the orientation, there is a 3rd party app called Actions that gives you the ability to check for device orientation for more conditional logic on your automation.


A more global approach may be to use a Focus mode (either your current Sleep focus or a new focus for Quiet Hours) and turn that Focus Mode on at a particular time of the day and when that Focus is enabled, automate changing the volume.

Thanks for this. Looks like for my use case you can create a pretty simple one based on time. I just set one up for 4:00 AM to auto set volume to 0.

Incidentally, this happened again to me today: scrolling through Sky News article at 6:30 AM - everyone else asleep - they have a video embed that I clicked accidentally whilst scrolling that blurted out the video and created a stir.

Looks like this automation will help. Cheers.

 

[fatTribble]

I think you make a great point. I’d love to see more thought put into everyday, common sense features like you mentioned with volume. Apple does a lot of impressive tricks with AI and photos, but they still include screen shots in Featured Photos for some reason. Wish I had an answer for the problem you identified.