Whether you’re an iPhone owner or an Android user, it can be a real shock to receive emergency alerts that sound deafeningly on your phone. Especially at night when you’re trying to sleep.
Amber alerts, a national public safety system designed to help recover missing children, can be particularly disruptive. But it’s not impossible to turn off these alerts on your iPhone or Android smartphone.
How to turn off amber alerts on your Iphone
Amber alerts are a national emergency response system that helps find abducted children. They are issued by law enforcement agencies and disseminate information about the kidnapped child, as well as a possible suspect. The system uses radio, television, and highway programs to spread these alerts.
These alerts can be very important and help increase public awareness of a missing child. However, they can also be annoying and distracting, especially when you’re trying to sleep or focus on a task.
Thankfully, there are ways to turn off amber alerts on your phone so that you can avoid hearing these loud sounds and interruptions. You can disable the amber alerts on an iPhone or an Android phone, and there are a few simple steps to do it.
First, head to your settings app. Then, scroll down to the Notifications section and tap on Government Alerts. You can then tap on the toggle next to AMBER Alerts to enable or disable it.
Another way to turn off amber alerts on an iPhone is to open the Messages app and select Emergency Alerts from the menu. This option is available on all versions of the iOS operating system.
1. Open the Settings app
When there is a national emergency in the United States, AMBER alerts (America’s Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response) are broadcast to help locate abducted children. These alerts are broadcast across all communication devices, including smartphones and computers.
The purpose of these alerts is to get the public’s attention, and in many cases, they are extremely useful. However, they can be very intrusive and scary.
If you don’t want to receive these alerts, or you think they’re too intrusive for your peace of mind, you can disable them on your iPhone. It’s easy to do, and you can even turn them off completely if you like.
To do this, first open the Settings app on your iPhone. You can do this by swiping right on the Home Screen or Lock Screen, or you can use Spotlight Search to open it.
Once you’re in the Settings app, scroll down until you find the Notifications section. You’ll be able to find it a couple of sections down, after your user information and connection settings.
2. Scroll down to the Notifications section
Emergency alerts are a great way to stay up-to-date on disasters, but they can also be super scary. Luckily, it’s easy to disable these annoying notifications on your iPhone so you don’t have to listen to them all the time.
The first step is to scroll down to the Notifications section on your iPhone. This can be done by either launching the Settings app or by tapping the Notifications button on your lock screen.
From here, you’ll see a section called Government Alerts. From here, you can toggle off AMBER Alerts and Public Safety Alerts.
There are other emergency and public safety alerts under this section as well, including alerts for severe weather events, presidential alerts, and more. However, keep in mind that these alerts are important and should not be disabled unless you truly find them unneeded.
If you’re using an iPhone running iOS 14.5 or later, then silencing these emergency alerts is pretty simple. All you have to do is head over to the Notifications section of your device’s Settings and disable the toggle next to “Always deliver.”
This will stop emergency alerts from playing on your device, but they’ll still show up in your Notification Center. As long as you’re on a mobile data network, these alerts won’t be interrupted by your Do Not Disturb or Airplane mode.
3. Tap on Government Alerts
If you have an iPhone and you’re concerned about receiving too many amber alert notifications, there’s a simple way to disable them. As you probably know, these alerts are sent from your country’s government to notify people of abductions and other emergencies.
Despite their important role, however, these alerts can be annoying and even disruptive. They don’t respect the iPhone’s Do Not Disturb settings, which can lead to interruptions in your day-to-day life, especially if you’re trying to concentrate on something that requires total focus.
In order to disable these alerts, you can go into the Notifications section of the Settings app and tap on Government Alerts. Here, you’ll be able to turn off AMBER alerts along with some other types of emergency alerts like Emergency Alerts and Public Safety Alerts.
Then, you can set the alert tone to either “on” or “off.” If you want to change the alert tone, make sure that the slider is set to “off.” You can also toggle off vibrations to prevent them from triggering when an AMBER alert arrives on your phone.
4. Tap on Amber Alerts
Amber Alerts are a great way to keep you and your family safe, but they can also be annoying. If you find yourself getting interrupted by loud notifications in the middle of a meeting or at three in the morning, it might be time to turn them off on your iPhone.
In the United States, AMBER alerts are issued when a child goes missing in your area and meets specific criteria. These alerts are distributed via radio, television, and DOT highway programming to draw attention to the case.
You can disable AMBER alerts on your iPhone by tapping the Government Alerts or Emergency Alerts option in Notifications. This will prevent you from receiving these alerts until you enable it again.
When you turn off AMBER alerts, you will no longer receive other government-related emergency alerts, such as Silver and Blue alerts. However, you may still receive test emergency alerts.
These test alerts are sent when your phone is in contact with a U.S. carrier, such as AT&T or Verizon, and are meant to test out new features. These alerts may include information that doesn’t pertain to you, or they may not appear at all.