MacMost Now 863: iPhone Custom Vibrations and LED Flash Alerts

You can set custom vibration patterns for your iPhone to use in addition to custom ringtones. You can use these vibrations to tell who is calling you, or what type of alert you have received. You can also set your phone to blink the LED flash so you can see an alert in addition to hearing and feeling it. You can turn off vibrations and silence your phone and still see the LED alert.

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Video Transcript: Hi this is Gary with MacMost Now. On today's episode let's look at vibrating and flashing alert on the iPhone.
With the iPhone today you've got a variety of options when you want to get an alert. Either whether it is a phone call coming in, a text message, or a reminder or some other kind of other notification. You of course can have different sounds play but can also have different vibrations and also you can make the flash blink.
As far as getting phone calls you can customize the type of alert you will get on a contact-by-contact basis. So here I am in Contact and I'm going to hit Edit. Right in here I'm going to go down to Ringtone. You can see here it is set to Default. But I can change the Ringtone to anything that I have set up in my iPhone including custom ones that I have added. 
I can also change the vibration for this. I can set it all the way down here to None or I can set it to one of these standard kind of vibration patterns. I can also set a custom pattern by tapping myself and recording it.
So to create a custom vibration all you need to do is to just tap the screen anywhere and make the pattern. You can have longer taps by holding down your finger and shorter ones by tapping very quickly. Then hit the stop button right there and now you can play it back to hear it. Now you can save that. It will ask for a name. Then you will see it appear under Custom and you can use it for contacts or anything else where you get to choose a vibration type.
Now in the Settings app I can set the defaults. Under Settings I can go to Sounds and there I can set whether or not I want vibration to happen and whether or not it should vibrate when I set my phone to silent by flipping the switch as well. I can set the different standard Sounds and Vibrations Patterns for instance for tweets or new voicemails and things like that. By simply tapping on them I can select not only the ringtone itself but I can go all the way up to the top here and I can select Vibration.
I can do the same things there. I can pick one of the defaults or create a custom vibration or set it to None.
Also you can go into General and to the Accessibility settings right here. There is setting for LED Flash Alerts. You can switch that on or off. So if you have that on what is going to happen is that you will get a flash as well as any vibration or sound.
So now in addition to getting a vibration and a sound I'm going to get a flash when this reminder notification goes off.
Now you won't get a flash if your phone is actually turned on. It is only if it is in sleep mode will you get the flash because if it is on well then you get the notification that appears on your screen. I guess that is the thinking there.
Also if you turn on Do Not Disturb of course not only will you not get sound and vibrations, but it won't flash either.
The most common reasons not get flash sometimes is if you don't have your phone in the sleep mode and locked but also sometimes you can turn off Notifications for certain things and if you do you may not get the flash for those events either.
I hope you found this useful. Until next time this is Gary with MacMost Now.

Comments: 3 Responses to “MacMost Now 863: iPhone Custom Vibrations and LED Flash Alerts”

Patricia

12 years ago

Thanks so much for this timely video. We were just puzzling over this setting last evening. Now we know how to turn off the LED.

jennifer

Is this for the iPhone 4s also?

Gary Rosenzweig

I think so. Why not just try it?

Comments Closed.

MacMost Now 863: iPhone Custom Vibrations and LED Flash Alerts

Comments: 3 Responses to “MacMost Now 863: iPhone Custom Vibrations and LED Flash Alerts”

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