I want to contribute to community efforts at finding missing kids and be ready for local disaster situations. But as someone who wears headphones my ears are often rattled for hours by these alerts.
This can't be an isolated issue as google indicates multiple lawsuits about this. https://9to5mac.com/2022/05/17/apple-hit-with-lawsuit-over-ear-shattering-amber-alert-volume-through-airpods-pro/
The link is for apple, but as an android user I face the same issue. What I don't understand is why
emergency notifications don't respect media volume? Can someone explain the technical logistical reasons for this?
Ask HN: Why is there no way to lower amber alert volume on headphones?
1–10 of 154 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why is there no way to lower amber alert volume on headphones?
#2My guess is a conservative reading of the applicable laws, if anything.
Turn off amber alerts; they're entirely useless and you can now turn them off without turning off the tornado warnings (almost entirely useless, too).
Re: Ask HN: Why is there no way to lower amber alert volume on headphones?
#3Full disclosure: I pulled this information out of my arse, but perhaps it's to avoid the situation where you leave them connected without realising? If it plays at max volume through the headphones you have a better chance of hearing it even if you're not actually wearing the headphones
Re: Ask HN: Why is there no way to lower amber alert volume on headphones?
#4I want to be able to silence Amber Alerts but still receive them. On Android, my only options are completely off, or full-blast obnoxious tone.
I CANNOT have my phone making noise, so it has to be fully off. If there was a choice for silent notifications, I would choose that.
Re: Ask HN: Why is there no way to lower amber alert volume on headphones?
#5My guess is a conservative reading of the applicable laws, if anything. Turn off amber alerts; they're entirely useless and you can now turn them off without turning off the tornado warnings (almost entirely useless, too).
Why are they useless? I grew up in an area with tornadoes and when one came ripping through my childhood suburb and destroyed some houses I was happy to have forewarning.
Re: Ask HN: Why is there no way to lower amber alert volume on headphones?
#6My guess is a conservative reading of the applicable laws, if anything. Turn off amber alerts; they're entirely useless and you can now turn them off without turning off the tornado warnings (almost entirely useless, too).
Why are they useless? I grew up in an area with tornadoes and when one came ripping through my childhood suburb and destroyed some houses I was happy to have forewarning.
We get them every single time a thunderstorm sniffs at anything in the tricounty area.
There may be a way to turn off the "Watch" alerts and still keep the "we are gonna die" alerts. The one time we got the green sky of doom the phone did explode in a way not normally seen, so I assume they know something about crying wolf.
As for amber alerts being useless - something like 90% (?) of the time it's a custody dispute where one parent hasn't returned the kid at the appointed time.
Re: Ask HN: Why is there no way to lower amber alert volume on headphones?
#7These are obviously complete trash. Waking people up in the middle of the night for some random child that was abducted half a Belgium away with no real call to action even if it were in the same very small town.
What we need is political pressure for a pay-to-play solution. You fire an alert at my phone, that's $100 deposited within a week against my phone bill or offered via mail for the pay-as-you-go burner phone types.
Then if the phone goes off I know its something real. Right now it's just a waste of resources and annoyance, probably killing more people than it is saving via sleepy or distracted drivers or medical professionals.
Re: Ask HN: Why is there no way to lower amber alert volume on headphones?
#8My guess is a conservative reading of the applicable laws, if anything. Turn off amber alerts; they're entirely useless and you can now turn them off without turning off the tornado warnings (almost entirely useless, too).
Why are they useless? I grew up in an area with tornadoes and when one came ripping through my childhood suburb and destroyed some houses I was happy to have forewarning.
You can get the same alerts via a non-broken (non-regulated) channel. There are apps for that.
The government mandated stuff just needs to be turned off because it's broken.
Re: Ask HN: Why is there no way to lower amber alert volume on headphones?
#9Never had the misfortune of receiving an alert when wearing headphones. And this topic is terrifying because I have already configured the EQ on my phone to boost a bit the sound and around 80% is already really loud. I'd prefer if the alert had at least the option to bypass the jack output and instead use always the speakers.
Re: Ask HN: Why is there no way to lower amber alert volume on headphones?
#10My guess is a conservative reading of the applicable laws, if anything. Turn off amber alerts; they're entirely useless and you can now turn them off without turning off the tornado warnings (almost entirely useless, too).
Why are they useless? I grew up in an area with tornadoes and when one came ripping through my childhood suburb and destroyed some houses I was happy to have forewarning.
I have amber alerts disabled but still receive weather emergency notifications. Which makes sense. Perhaps it works differently in different states?
In Texas my iPhone has this alert granularity: AMBER Emergency Public Safety Test