Replace Ringtones With Custom Vibrations On An iPhone

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you how to have your iPhone vibrate when you get a phone call or message instead of playing an audible ringtone.

For most people when they get a phone call or text message on their iPhone it plays an audible ringtone. Everybody in the room can hear it. But you can have your iPhone instead vibrate silently and you can customize that vibration so it can tell you who is calling or texting you. 

So to set this up go into Settings and then go down until you find Sound & Haptics. Go into there and this is where you can set Ringtones for various things. For instance, you can set a ringtone for a phone call, for when you get a text message, and for other things, like a new voicemail, a new email, calendar alerts, and so on. If you go into one of these, like let's go into Ringtone here for phone calls, you can set the ringtone that it plays. But you can also set Haptics here. If you tap here you can choose how your iPhone vibrates. It can vibrate using different patterns. If the phone is in your pocket, in your hand, or even just sitting on your desk you can usually feel these patterns. Often you can hear the vibration as well, usually much quieter than a ringtone would be. 

Now you can try out the different standard patterns here to hear them and set one, in this case, for your ringtone. So when somebody calls you it would use this pattern. But you can also setup a custom vibration. Just tap here and then what you're going to do is tap the screen. Anywhere on the screen here in the middle and you can set a vibration. So you can do long taps, short taps, whatever you want. So, for instance, I'll start tapping here and tap out a pattern. (tapping). Then when you're done tap Stop. You'll see this pattern here at the bottom as a series of short dashes. You can play it back to feel the pattern and see if it is what you want. If it is not what you want you can always record again using the button here at the bottom right. Once you get it right you can tap Save. Then you give this a name. I'll call this one Test and I'll Save it. So you can see I've got this custom pattern listed here as well as all of the standard ones. You can always Edit and then you can remove the custom pattern if you want. Then you can very easily create new ones. 

You can create a series of them. So, for instance, I want to create one that's meant to be the pattern telling me I'm getting a phone call. (tapping). That's my pattern there. I'm going to save it and I'm going to call it Default Call. I'll save it there. Let me create a few others. So here you see I've created a variety of different ones. Now the idea is I want them to play in different situations. So, remember here I was at the ringtone section here and under Haptics I want to set it to what the default ringtone is going to be. So I'll do it at Default Call here. Then I want to go back and I want to go to Text Tone. Here for Haptics I'm going to use the one I created called Default Text. So now when I get a vibration I know whether it is a call or a text based on the vibration pattern. 

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If I like I can also go in and in addition to having a special Haptics vibration I can set the ringtone to None. So now I won't get any audible notification that I get a text message. Only the vibration pattern. Now you can't do the same thing for ringtone. There's no way to set it to just None. But you can go and set the volume for Ringtones down to nothing or, of course, set your iPhone into Silent Mode. In fact, you can also set what happens when you're in Silent Mode for Haptics. So, here I've got it set to always Play. So even when my iPhone is set to silent the vibrations will play. But I can also have it set to Don't Play Them in Silent Mode, only play them when I don't have Silent Mode on. I can also set them to Play Only in Silent Mode. So in other words if I have Silent Mode On I get a vibration. If Silent Mode is OFF I get the ringtone. 

So now under Ringtone it is going to play the default call vibration I wanted. Under Text Tone it is going to play the default text vibration that I wanted. I can set a vibration pattern for other things as well. I can setup, say, New Mail to have a vibration pattern here so then I get a new message in I get a different pattern. 

There are a variety of different things that you can use these custom vibrations for. Even the default Alert can have a vibration pattern set. 

Alright, now I have it set that I get one vibration pattern for a phone call, another vibration pattern for a text message. So now I can tell which one I'm getting even when I have my iPhone silenced. But the real power here is being able to set different vibration patterns for different people. So, to do that go into the Contacts App. In Contacts choose a contact here and then Edit. Now look under Ringtone or Text Tone. You can set a Default Tone for each person or a vibration as well. So I'm going to set it that when I get a text from this person it's going to use Haptics. I had created one called Jane Text. I'm going to set that as the Haptic for this person. So now when I get a text message from them I will feel that special vibration pattern and I'll know who is texting me without even having to look at my iPhone. 

 I can do the same thing for a Ringtone as well. I can use the same pattern or a different pattern as well as setting a specific ringtone for that person if I want. Now I can also go into a Contact, like this, and then choose a pattern such as the one that I called Work Text. The idea here is that it is not going to be a pattern for just this one person but for anyone that texts me that happens to be somebody I work with. So I'll go to this one right here and I will also set this person to use the Haptics, Work Text Vibration. You can do that for as many people as you like. So when you get that vibration pattern you know it is somebody from work texting you. If it is in the evening, say, you know that you don't have to get to it right away. 

When creating these patterns just create patterns that are different enough from each other that you can recognize them when you feel them. However, don't worry too much about memorizing them right off the bat. You'll find that over time as you get text messages or phone calls or alerts that use different vibration patterns you'll start to recognize them automatically. 

Here's another way to get your iPhone to vibrate. You can go into the Shortcuts App and create a shortcut that's like this. Just use Vibrate Device and Wait 1 Second and put them in a pattern like this. You can make your pattern much more complex. Then I'm going to go back here to the top level of Shortcuts, create an automation and make a New Automation. Then I'm going to set this one for Message. I can set it for a specific sender or just leave it at Any Sender. Then I can also set Message Contains and put some words in there and then have it run immediately. Then set that to run that vibration pattern shortcut there. So now whenever I get a text message from anybody with that word in it I'll have the Shortcuts App play that vibration pattern. It will even do it when your phone is locked. Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.