One of the best changes Apple’s made this year is arguably one of the easiest to miss – a toggle tucked away in Settings. It’s a wonder it took almost two decades, but in iOS 27 you can finally set the volume of your ringtone, alarms, and alerts independently. The future is now!
This change should curb the confusion when using the volume buttons: plenty of people crank their volume to the max so they don’t sleep through an alarm, only to be shocked out of their skin when a text lands two minutes later at the same ear-splitting level. Now you can set each separately, safe in the knowledge you won’t get caught out.
Note: this is a preview of an upcoming iOS 27 feature. To try it for yourself, join Apple’s beta testing program in July or wait for the public release in September.
How to set separate volumes
Open Sounds & Haptics in Settings and you’ll find the main slider under Ringtone, which controls everything at once by default. To break things apart, switch off the Match Ringtone Volume toggle under Alarms and Timers and/or Alerts and System Sounds. Each then gets its own slider, and those levels stay put even when you change the master volume or mash the buttons – so you can set a loud alarm without your texts blasting you out of your seat.
With the new stuff out of the way, let’s demystify a few other common points of confusion.
What the volume buttons actually do
Press your device’s physical volume buttons and what happens depends on what’s playing. If a video or audio clip is going, the buttons control that. If nothing’s playing, they adjust your ringtone instead – provided Change with Buttons is on in Settings. Turn it off and the buttons leave your ringtone and alerts alone entirely, giving you a fixed level nothing can knock askew.
What silent mode does and doesn’t mute
Silencing your iPhone or switching on Do Not Disturb mutes your ringtone, alerts, text tones, and system sounds. But it doesn’t touch your alarms and timers, which always sound at whatever level you’ve set – Apple would rather you didn’t sleep through your wake-up call. Also, some video players auto-mute media when silent mode is on. A quick tap of a volume button unmutes playback and gets your sound back.
Picking up good vibrations
Vibration has its own controls in the same place. Under the Vibrate section at the top of Sounds & Haptics, flick Vibrate on Ring and Vibrate on Silent to taste – a “silent” phone buzzing on a desk isn’t truly silent. For something more specific, scroll to Sounds and Vibration Patterns, tap Ringtone, Text Tone, or any other alert, then Vibration. Pick a ready-made pattern or tap Create New Vibration to tap out your own.