Do you sometimes miss the doorbell or knock on the door because you're wearing headphones? Not everyone knows this, but there is a built-in feature in iPhone settings for recognizing sounds. By default, this feature is located in the Accessibility section of system settings and will notify you every time you hear a given sound, but you can take it a step further by triggering a shortcut.
Note that Apple's documentation explicitly states that this feature should not be relied upon "for sound recognition in situations where you may be injured or injured, in high-risk or emergency situations, or for navigation." If the risk is lower than that number, though, you probably won't miss out on something.
To get started, open System Settings and go to Accessibility > Voice Recognition . Turn on this feature.
From here you can toggle the sounds you want your phone to passively listen to. The default list includes alarms, pets, and various household sounds, such as a kettle boiling or a knock on the door. You can enable sounds and receive a notification every time your iPhone "notices" a sound. You can also train your phone to recognize your specific devices and alerts. The process is guided, meaning triggering the alarm multiple times so your phone can recognize it.
As I mentioned before, you can also use this feature to trigger Apple Shortcuts. The only limitation here is the shortcuts you manage to build. For example, you could record how many times you boil a kettle of water each day, or how often your neighbor's dog barks. Or you could be like me and set your phone to talk to you every time something fairly common happens because you think it's funny.
First, open the Shortcuts app on your phone and then open the Automation tab. Scroll down near the bottom and you'll see Voice Recognition . You can choose the sound that triggers the automation and the shortcut to run.
Note that you can add any number of automations, meaning you can trigger different shortcuts for different sounds. Use this new power wisely.
