Hi There community,
I recently updated my Apple Watch Series 10 to the latest Watch OS 11.1.
Prior to updating i always used to keep my voiceover volume on the watch at the lowest level at around 5%.
This would allow me to discretely listen to my Watch notifications without disturbing the people around me and also maintaining my privacy.
Ever since i have updated from Watch OS 11 to Watch OS 11.1, i find that the minimum volume on Voiceover is extremely loud, much louder than what it used to be.
I have gone into the Watch app on my iPhone and played around with all the settings under Voiceover.
I have tried to switch on and switch off Voice clarity which auto adjusts the volume of voiceover based on ambient noise.
I have also played around with all the other speech and audio settings, but i am still not able to get the minimum volume to sound low enough.
One thing i have noticed that the Voiceover volume generally moves in increments of 5%. I have noticed that all the voiceover volume settings from 5, to 10 to 15% all sound like they have the exact same volume or so it sounds like this to my ear.
Is anybody else facing similar issues and what could be possible workarounds?
Currently this situatoin is making the watch very irritating for me as well as those around me when i use it in an indoors environment such as my home or my workplace.
Thank you in advance for all of your help!
Comments
Workaround
Hi Gaurav,
The short version is that Apple made some changes to volume in watchOS 11.1, both in terms of the default volume level and the VoiceOver Volume Rotor. Now, by default, the VoiceOver Volume Rotor only appears to adjust the volume of VoiceOver relative to every other sound on the device. The default VoiceOver Rotor volume level is 180%, in case you want to set it back to the way it was. While Apple is sorting this out, my recommendation is to use Siri to lower the media volume. You could try saying something like, "Set media volume to 50%." I believe that 80% was the default volume level prior to the release of watchOS 11.1.
Yeah this has disrupted…
Yeah this has disrupted everyone's workflow. But I don't understand one thing, the fact that VO volume can go above 100 is it a sementic semantic bug or is there any usefulness there?
I also understand that now VO rotor and gesture for volume only adjusts VO volume itself and nothing else?
Volume
There is nothing else above 100%. Apple screw up and trying to do something that was working with audioducking it ended up braken it.
It’s slightly different on the iPhone.
In the iPhone, if you don’t set your voiceover volume at like 150% or more. The audio ducking completely breaks and doesn’t work. It’s so weird. Yes, they changed something in both volumes.
Volume above 100%
If it's volume relative to everything else then it makes sense that you can go above 100% as it's effectively making it louder than other media.
I believe they introduced a change to the watch so that it can play media through its own speakers which you couldn't do before. So I guess this might be a consequence of that.
I installed 11.1 this morning and noticed the volume suddenly got really loud and it was set to well above 100% in the rotor. As mentioned above, asking Siri to change the volume seemed to be a better bet. I guess it's about using a combination of the two.