When you shut down, boot up, or restart your iPhone, it never makes a sound. Many computers and Android devices do, so why can’t your iPhone? Well, some of you may never need to ask that question again.
There’s a hidden setting on iOS 16 that gives you a chime sound every time you turn off your iPhone or turn it back on. You’ll hear it at the same volume level each time, regardless of your device’s volume level. Your iPhone can even be on silent mode, and you’ll still hear the shutdown and power-on chime.
The only issue is that it’s only for iPhone 14 series models. So if you have an iPhone 14, iPhone 14 Plus, iPhone 14 Pro, or iPhone 14 Pro Max, you can enable the power-down and boot-up sounds.
It’s super helpful for blind and low-vision users since it’s impossible to tell when an iPhone is shutting down or powering on without it. And it’s just as valuable for everyone else, so you no longer have to stare at your iPhone waiting for the Apple logo to pop up. Plus, it just sounds cool.
The setting is buried in your Accessibility settings, but it’s easy to activate. Just navigate to Settings –> Accessibility –> Audio/Visual, then toggle on the “Power On & Off Sounds” switch.
Then, whether you manually power off and on your iPhone or restart it, you’ll hear the device shutdown sound and boot chime. If you ever need to force restart your iPhone, you won’t hear the shutdown sound but will hear the boot chime.
The power-off sound file, DeviceShutdown.caf, is buried in the “UISounds” folder hidden on the iOS software. The start-up audio file, d27-boot-chime.im4p, d28-boot-chime.im4p, d73-boot-chime.im4p, or d74-boot-chime.im4p, depending on your iPhone 14 model, is hidden in the “embeddedaudioresources” firmware folder.
Cool fact: The device shutdown audio was leaked on the day of the iPhone 14 announcement, and it was found via the same folder mentioned above on the iOS 16 Release Candidate for a non-14 model device. Considering it’s an accessibility feature for blind and low-vision users, it’s possible we’ll get the sounds on other iPhone models in a future software update, especially since one of the sounds was found before the iPhone 14 series models were even released.
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