Max volume is deafening. I have sensitive hearing and get overstimulated easily, whenever my alarm starts I have to cover my phone’s speaker to get the auto-adjust back down to a reasonable volume. If I could set it to max out at 70%, I’d still get the same sense of morning panic without feeling like I’m getting punched in the ears.
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One thing nobody seems to have mentioned so far is the risk of straight up hearing damage from loud alarms. Especially because most phones get really loud in damaging high frequencies and they often go off next to your ear.
There is no way to rely on the user to stop the alarm before the volume before it becomes harmful.
Please add a maximum volume guys.
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Another issue with increasing to a phone’s maximum volume over a fixed timeframe: a phone with a very high maximum volume (like my Galaxy S8) gets to a volume sufficient to disturb others very quickly - in my case, with the volume increase duration set to 24 minutes, I usually shut it off within 1 minute, and never get to the 3 minute mark. The steps in volume are so significant I can hear them happening.
Most phones’ maximum volume is designed so you can hear media in a noisy room and ringtones over busy traffic. The alarm isn’t “gentle” if it gets too loud for the user very quickly. There’s no way to use this app to listen to music for any appreciable length of time while waking up.
Edit:
On further investigation, this old report/request also matches: Lower minimum volume level
Is the app still supposed to use its own media player and volume settings? If so, why is it falling back to system-wide settings (evident by the huge increment consistent with the available levels in system sound settings) on so many phones? Should this be classified as a bug instead of a feature request?
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This really should be incorporated. You can’t rely on the phone manufacturer to make the level fine. Also, I can personally attest that one can get hearing damage from the max volume of phone. This is such a no brainer, I don’t know why it isn’t incorporated.
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I thought the volume was bugged, didn’t understand that this option ignored the volume that you set in alarm sound; super unintuitive. I personally would like to leave this option at around a minute for a smooth transition but the 100% volume is way to loud; guess the only fix is to use tasker to lower the volume or encode the wake up music in a low volume.
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I just add my vote for this feature. Would be nice to have it. Without it is walking to music or online radio hard when you just want to listen and gradualy wake up cause at some point it gets too loud and if you dont live alone in the woods…
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In past versions of the app, I appreciated the feature to add a gentle increase in volume to the alarm with a max volume. Now it seems the max volume option is gone; I can only control how long the gentle increase lasts. However, the default max volume, which I assume is full volume, is much too loud. It wakes up other people in the house. Normally I like to listen to the quiet music for a minute after waking up, but it seems that is no longer an option.
Please restore this feature. I used it before without ever oversleeping. In fact I oversleep more now without the feature since I have to hurry to turn off my alarm without properly walking up. I would appreciate it very much.
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I discovered the increase volume feature just recently and I am in strong support for this feature as well.
Our current stance on this matter is that we don’t want to implement it because it would inevitably lead to someone setting up the volume limit too low and oversleeping.
In my opinion, this is ridiculous. Why can I set the volume of an alarm then at all? By that logic, shouldn’t every alarm be fixed at maximum volume since otherwise some user will set it too low? How can you justify that option, but not this one?.
We usually recommend setting the gentle volume increase to a longer time, so the low volume levels are playing for a longer time.
I currently have the time set to the highest setting (24 minutes) and after 5 minutes it gets uncomfortably loud. On max volume it would be literally deafening. Phones have become too loud for that to be acceptable.
I simply want to wake up gently over a period of like 30 minutes and then leave my (radio) alarm running. Just because you are afraid some user is too stupid to test their alarm before relying on it and will then blame the app developers for it? I cannot comprehend this reasoning.
A suggestion: To make it clear for a user what the alarm will do with the volume increase you could visualize the volume level over time. Show a timeline to the user and the volume level as a graph to make it obvious what is going to happen. That is much more development cost than just adding the maximum level feature itself, but I think then the behavior should be clear.
This feature would actually improve my life and I think it would benefit many more people than it would harm.
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I just want to wake up to some radio, that increase slowly to background level, so I could wake up slowly. I got this method recommended from a doctor. However in this (amazingly detailed and useful) app, I need to choose between a gentle raise to a sane volume.
Please let users choose what they want.
Add a “gentle raise to non-max level” option, if you prefer, but give the users the choice.
Thanks!
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I personally have a phone with a pretty loud speaker so max volume is too loud (so loud that I think other people in the apartment building can hear it). So this option would be perfect.But since the dev is not implumenting this, here is a workaround for yall:
Find the audio file of your alarm sound and load it up into Audacity (or any similar program). Go to filters->bass and treble, set the last slider to a negative value (depends on how much you want to lower the volume) and click apply. Then export the audio from the file menu (as wav or mp3) and set that as your alarm sound.
Sure it’s not the same but it works for my case. I really hope this gets added in the app one day…
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+1
I just wanted to write a long story about why you should implement this, but after reading the posts, I think there would be no point in that. Instead I just bought the app, so I can feel little more competent for the request. This is really a bug, not a feature request. There is no real reason, why the Gentle volume increase function should ignore the alarm volume, that was set by a user.
(Actually if there is also lower volume limit, it would be even better, I guess 
)
Please do what is right, if possible. There is absolutely no need to force the function to use the full volume range. I believe there will be more and more people, who will use alarm app for listening a music (and you know, you could do better with selecting files for playlist - like function select all in a folder) for better mornings, but first there have to be appropriate option.
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@jiri-urbandroid this is almost word for word my reasoning. I have a baby, and neighbors. I recently started to listen to news radio to wake up. (I love the integration of that feature. Awesome) I’m way more likely to wake up pleasantly if I listen to people talking gently about interesting topics that engages my mind slowly. If I can’t adjust max volume, that becomes people yelling. That’s annoying, and disruptive, and I turn it off.
You’re only hesitant because you think people will turn it too low or off? Make it a beta feature. But that’s on them to test the alarm volume. You don’t get to control people. I’ve loved your alarm for almost 10 years. It’s always felt like the alarm is working with me. But as it stands now, I’m not using any of its features because the new way I want to wake up is not supported.
Add max volume adjustment. Please.
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I vote for this option ! 
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This is how I would like to use it: wake up gradually, then leave the alarm-radio turned on while I’m getting dressed and through breakfast, then it times-out and turns itself off automatically when it’s time to leave for work. This entire period is my wake-up process.
That requires a max-volume setting so that I’m listening to music for a good start to the day, rather than looking for earplugs to dampen the noise. If it gets too loud, I might as well have been woken by a loud truck and bright interrogation lights. In that case, I would rather be left to sleep in. Being woken so violently surely does not make for good sleep hygiene. The loud noise actually exhausts me prematurely so I end up needing to stop work earlier rather than completing my day.
The gradual wake-up and configurable time-out was actually the primary reason why I paid for a subscription, but then I found that the interface wasn’t quite honest about what the app actually does.
At the moment my work-around is to use the longest gradual volume increase with a one-minute time-out, and to set the backup alarm to silent. This easily wakes me enough to get out of bed, but I lose the alarm duration that would support the remainder of the waking-up process.
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Hello folks, many thanks for your feedback. The reason we did not yet implement this is we want primarily make sure people wake up… so if soem one does not react to 80% we need to try to go higher in a hope that 90% will wake him… afterall the phone may be in another room or under pillow etc…
But I guess the issue here is that maximum volume can get the phone speaker over amplified and maybe for that reason we should have an let say 90% cap on the max volume option?
Would that resolve the your usecase?
Hello Petr, my use-case would be more like 30%, maybe even as low as 20%. I think the cap would likely to be phone-dependent as well as idiosyncratic to each user and, as you point out, muffled after sliding under a pillow through the night.
It’ll be interesting to see what levels other people feel will work for them.
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The problem with that is we will than be overwhelmed with support emails like
User: “My alarm did not wake me up, I missed work, my boss fired me and your *** aalrm clock is to blame”
Support: “Well you set your maximum volume to 30%”
User:“Well, yes… I did not know what I’m doing”
In fact we are already getting those, if users turn off the gentle volume increase feature - then we rely on the system volume level as set at the moment of alarm.
Maybe this would be a solution for you too? What about turning gentle volume off - anyway 30% is already guide gentle and just rely on the set volume?
I see your dilemma. It is a standard one, alas! I used to work in tech support a long time ago, and yes, so many complaints come from misunderstanding, and they can be very very angry.
Here are some difficulties with your suggested approach, though
- if sonar sets the volume to maximum, it needs to set it back again for the alarm
- 30% is fairly loud on my phone (it is a good volume for me to hear the radio alarms even in the adjacent bathroom), so I would get a sudden wake-up not a gradual wake-up
I wonder whether a change in the interface design would be helpful. My experience is that UI is the most difficult part of any app development process because it has to anticipate and guide ways of thinking and interpreting that don’t occur to us. For example, the “test” function for the sensor is not really a test function, but a measuring function whose output display isn’t straightfowards for many users to correctly interpret. I was confused by that for a while, even though I’ve got a graduate degree in experimental physics. This is behind my question in another thread about how to interpret the responses for good sonar calibration.
So maybe some UI adjustments might address some of those difficult “I did not know what I’m doing” complaints?
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Sonar is not an issue… Sonar uses the media stream where alarm uses the alarm screen so their volume in independent…
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I can understand that…
I agree, UX is the hard part… but honestly if we introduce a cap on max volume I do not see a way how to properly communicate this with the user so that they guaranteed get woken up in the morning.
What about addressing this use-case with some other approach… we have advanced automation features… when the alarm gets dismissed you can start another app which can play your music your morning music for instance?
It’s unfortunate that you get complaints from users who mess up their own settings. There are a lot of settings in the app that the average user would have a hard time understanding, myself included, and I understand not wanting to add more complexity to that.
But for the app to be used properly, most people will keep it near their head while they sleep. A phone’s speaker is designed so it can be heard from a distance, so going to maximum volume while it’s near your ears can permanently damage your hearing. Android itself warns you about this the first time you raise the volume above a certain level after turning the phone on.
There are already plenty of settings that would prevent a user from waking up, if the user doesn’t activate enough countermeasures to force them to get up then that’s their fault and they shouldn’t be blaming you. Just a simple slider for “maximum volume” is all we ask, preferably with no minimum level. If you think you need a minimum then it should be 10% or something, because users in here have mentioned their phone volume and that 30% is still pretty loud for the tracks they’re playing. If you’re worried about users not understanding the ramifications of changing this setting, you can hide it somewhere in the advanced settings, or put up a warning if it’s lowered.
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