Back in early 2019, I started thinking about ringtones. You can read all about my thoughts here. A decade earlier, I’d spent quite a bit of time customizing ringtones for my most important contacts. Like most of you, I was also pretty obsessed with making sure my phone didn’t sound like everyone else’s. I employed a (possibly too expensive and complex) set of editing programs to make sure I got exactly what I wanted.
By the late 2010s, it seemed the tide was turning away from ringtones. The whole idea of a ringtone was that you’d know when someone called you. At this point there were two problems with that kind of thinking. The first was that due to the huge volume of spam calls, fewer people were answering their phones at all. The rising tide of Millennials and GenZ folks considered it rude to call someone without texting them first, and the very idea of voice calls seemed to be going away.
The other issue was that people didn’t need to actually listen to their phones because they were so busy looking at them. If you keep your phone in your back pocket, you probably take it out when you sit. This means you can see the alerts when they happen. You may also have a watch that shows them to you. So, in the end, the ringtone isn’t super necessary.
And then 2020.
Not much more than a year later, I like most of you found myself sitting at home with my family trying to work. We all tried to minimize the number of stray noises so that, well, honestly, no one would strangle anyone. I wrote about that in one of my favorite lockdown-era posts, “Living my life on vibrate.” I forecasted that when everyone returned to work, I’d turn my ringtone back on. I never did. I just got used to the silence.
But then, there’s a lot about 2020 that I think no one anticipated, and so we all learned a lot. A year or so later, we promptly tried as hard as possible to forget all of it.
But now, it’s four years later
Ringtones are largely gone from our society, but that’s not a terribly bad thing. It turns out that we really don’t need more beeping and dinging in our lives. But there’s some indication that things might be swinging back. For the first time, in Apple iOS 17, you’re able to change not only your ringtone but also the default notification sound. Yes, Apple should have done this a decade ago. But the fact that they’re putting some effort into it now tells me one thing. Apparently, there are people who still keep the sound on. As for me I don’t even remember what the notifications sound like.
I’m sort of curious as to whether or not people will use this feature. Will I start hearing more sounds when I’m out and about? Or will this be another feature like so many others that Apple rolls out with great fanfare, only to have it be forgotten? Only time will tell.
