I am having problems managing the various volume settings in I O S 18. For example, when I schedule a timer, voiceover is at a comfortable volume. But, when the timer expires, and the sounder plays, the timer sounder will play at a normal volume for a couple seconds, and then will automatically fade way down. Voiceover is typically very much louder at this point than it was when I scheduled the timer. When I cancel the timer, voiceover returns to normal. The volume in settings > Sounds and haptics is like 80%, so is fairlly high, and voiceover seems to be using that setting when the chime is playing, but the chime itself is much less. This makes no sense to me. Suggestions very welcome. thanks.
Comments
Attention aware features
Sounds like you’re experiencing a common problem.
Whenever you’re looking at your phone and it detects it, the volume gets reduced.
You can disable this behavior in settings, accessibility, Face ID, attention aware features.
iPhone Volume Settings
Yes, this got rid of the ducking problem. So, that was what I needed. thank you. Does anybody know of a source for documentation of the iPhone audio architecture in general? I find that you have to do a lot of experimenting to figure out what works for you. For example, voiceOver speaks through different volume controls, depending on what has focus, and no I dont' have any special focus activities defined. But, I wonder if there is actually any user-level documentation on how all this works floating around somewhere.
Attention Settings
Is this attention setting new to IOS 18, or a pretty new version of IOS? I was having a different volume audio ducking problem I couldn't figure out. I tried disabling this feature on a whim to see if it would help, and so far, things seem better. It's a little too early to tell, but I'm hoping this fixes a problem I've been having since I believe IOS 18 was released.
For anyone curious, whenever I play media like music, YouTube, or any other media, there's a good chance that the media itself will be a lot lower volume than it should. As a low vision user, I do some things with VoiceOver on, and some with it off. I noticed if I then turn VO on and off a time or two, the media volume will raise to where it should be. It's like there's audio ducking, but the volume doesn't come back as it's supposed to.
I'm hoping this setting fixes things. I've tried a couple of videos, and other audio, and volume has been behaving so far, so fingers crossed...
How does the attention feature do with FaceTime video calls?
I believe there is a thread floating around here, somewhere, that discusses how during a FaceTime video call, the audio is ducked, and I believe comes back once the call has ended. Does this attention feature affect that in anyway?