You can set up your iPhone notifications in many ways. You might like vibrating alerts, audible alerts, or maybe you don’t want any alerts at all. Now there is a new visual alert, but it’s buried away and hard to find.
Today I’ll fix that and show you where it is hiding.
Apple has introduced a kind of visual alert using the LED on your iPhone. Activating this alert will cause your iPhone to trigger the camera LED when you receive an email or message when the ringer is turned off. You can set it up with these steps:
- Launch the Settings App.
- Tap General
- Tap Accessibility
- Toggle LED Flash for Alerts to On.
Although this feature is offered for people who are hearing impaired practically anyone could find it useful.
David W. Martin has more than 20 years of experience in the industry as a programmer, systems and business analyst, author, and consultant. David has written for CNET’s iPhoneatlas.com, MacLife.com, CultofMac.com, BYTE.com and recently for aNewDoman.net. He comes to Cult of Mac’s website with deep knowledge and passion for the all things Apple. Follow David on Twitter @david_w_martin or see what he’s up to now at davidwmartin.com.
32 responses to “Turn On The Visual LED Notification Alert in iOS 5 [iOS Tips]”
Does the vibrate feature have to be off as well? I’ve had this set this way for a week now, but no flash. Any ideas?
white on black is cool too.. but straining
i turned it on the first day ios 5 was released…..i’ve seen it work a few times at best….it’s not consistent……
seems to not work for me either, last time I tried it.
No if it didn’t work the led turn the led off and then on. It worked for me also make sure the notification is alert not banner. E mail me if u need more help. [email protected]
Does this burst the camera flash as an alert? Seems like that would be crazy bright or does it tone its intensity down to save on battery and all
works for me.. also you can have custom vibration alerts and even compose your own :)
It’s convenient to set white on black as a Triple-click Home feature, so you can access it when you want and quickly change it back when you don’t.
How about an iOS tip to tell us how to eliminate annoying banners that stick to the top of our iPhone screens? Like the Cult of Mac banner covering over what I’m writing in this comment field? I cant see my typing, so I hope I typed correctly!
The giant Cult of Mac banner that stays fixed in place as you scroll the page is extremely annoying on an iPhone.
I would be cautious of this. I set it on my iPhone 4 the day iOS 5 was released. It worked perfectly, flashing for every alert. Bad news is the LED on my iPhone stopped functioning at all today.
I loved this for about 2 minutes until I realized a major downside. One thing I have a tendency to do for some reason when I am laying down is setting my phone on my face. I don’t know why I do it, so don’t ask. However, the LED flash turns out to be very annoying when my phone is laying on my face, I get a text, and practically become blinded by the notification.
Nada here.
I turned it off after a few days. I was driving one night, it was very dark, my phone was on silent (which stops me being tempted to read any message) but the LED flashed a few times lighting up the care. I got quite a fright. LOL
Sorry, I have to ask. Why do you do it?
at first, i thought that the 5.0.1 update killed my LED alerts. no so. for the alerts to flash – the phone must be in the Lock Screen mode.
kind of makes sense: if you’re looking at the face of the phone and it’s not locked … you can’t see the flash anyway.
but they still have a bug in the led alerts: if you have it set – then reboot the phone; the alerts no longer flash. you must go back into Settings and turn them off, then back on.
SIGH.
Shade LED Flash Alert does not work on my 4s tried every possible combination of setting including making sure the flash on the camera was in the on position. Any suggestions