Give Your iPhone Mac-Like Shutdown and Startup Chimes So You Know When It Powers Off and On

Have you ever heard a sound when you shut down, boot up, or restart your iPhone? Probably not, but it doesn't have to stay that way.

Many computers and Android devices support power-related sounds and have for some time now, but it's something Apple always omitted from iOS — until now. Deep in your iPhone's settings, there's a hidden option to make your iPhone spit out a chime every time you turn your iPhone off or back on.

With the preference enabled, you'll hear the chime 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 running iOS 16.0 or later. 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.

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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 the boot chime.

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The power-off sound file, DeviceShutdown.caf, is buried in the "UISounds" folder hidden in 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.

Unlike Mac computers, there are no different startup chimes for iPhones that indicate various issues when trying to power on your device. Apple uses different chimes on Macs to differentiate between successful bootups and starts with hardware or software issues detected.

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. However, as of iOS 16.3, it's still an iPhone 14 exclusive.

Cover photo and screenshots by Justin Meyers/Gadget Hacks