After nearly 20 Years, Apple lets you separate alarm and ringer volumes with iOS 27
Apple's finest quality-of-life improvements usually don't get any screen time at WWDC keynotes.
This simple feature has been a really long time coming. | Image by PhoneArena
It's taken nearly twenty years, but iOS has finally scored a way to separate alarm and system volume levels!
A couple of days ago, iOS 27 got officially announced at WWDC'26, which happens to be Tim Cook's last major event as an Apple CEO. While the iOS 27 event was just about completely centered around the revamped Siri AI that's coming to the whole ecosystem, Apple still snuck in tons of useful quality-of-life improvements to the popular iOS.
Alarms are finally becoming good
Until now, alarm volume has been tied to the system volume level, which means it's shared with your ringer volume and other system-like sound effects. Media volume has fortunately been decoupled from that.
This essentially meant that if you kept your volume level low enough for a gentle alarm wake-up, you had to readjust the ringer volume afterward if you didn't want to miss an important call, or vice versa.
Keeping things at a moderate volume level that satisfies both conditions has been the workaround I presume most people have settled with, but let's be honest here: not being able to set a separate alarm volume level has been a massive oversight affecting billions of iOS users.
A setting that was a long time coming
Now, iOS 27 brings a nifty toggle in the "Sound & haptics" submenu which allows you to decouple the alarm and ringer volumes. Just go inside this menu and swipe down until you see the "Alarms and triggers" section.
By default, the toggle is enabled, which means that your ringer and alarms are of the same volume, which has been the case until now.
If you toggle the "Match Ringtone Volume" toggle off, you can set a specific alarm volume that would be separate from your system ringer volume.
It's worth mentioning that setting a separate alarm volume won't affect wake-up alarms that the Health app can automatically set for you based on your preferred sleep time.
Do you think Apple's volume system is now closer to Android?
Yes, Apple's volume sliders are as easy to grasp as Android.
25%
No, Android handles volume setup way better still.
75%
Apple's solution is better and more intuitive.
0%
Interestingly, you can also decouple alerts and system sounds from your ringtone volume from within this menu as well. This means that pretty much any vital audio category can now have its separate volume level.
The only downside is you have to navigate to this menu if you want to change any volume level, while Android lets you adjust any of these easily from within the volume slider menu that appears when you press your volume buttons.
iOS 27 is close to the perfect software update
This is just one of the changes that make iOS 27 a fantastic update. Aside from the major Siri AI revamp, iOS 27 is mostly a quality-of-life software upgrade that irons out many kinks and improves existing features.
iOS 27 will arrive to an iPhone near you this fall, but only the latest iPhone models will be able to make use of Siri AI's most impressive features.
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