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The sound effects for screenshots can be really annoying and loud at certain times. How can I turn this off? It makes the noise even when my volume is all the way down?

Update: I want to simply silence the sound effect, without any other side effects. Turning on the phone's vibration mode means it will make noise when something causes it to vibrate, so this defeats the purpose.

3 Answers 3

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To my knowledge, there technically is not a way to specifically and only disable the camera shutter sound for screenshots, but there are still solutions to stop it from making the sound:

One thing you can do is flip the mute toggle switch on the side of your device to be muted (silent/vibrate). You will see a Ringer Silent icon on the screen and may feel a vibration on an iPhone. After that, there will be no noise from the screenshot (among other things).

On an iPhone, if you don't wan't to get the vibration when turning the phone to silent, or if you want to leave it on silent without getting vibrations, you can go to Settings > Sound and toggle "Vibrate on Silent" off. Then it won't vibrate or make any noise. However, you also won't hear any notification sounds or vibrations at all, so you run the risk of missing some alerts. So in this case what you may want to do is flip the mute toggle to silent right before taking a screenshot (and it won't make any noise from vibration), and then after the screenshot flip it back to normal.

Another alternative, if you don't mind the camera shutter sound but just want it quieter, is that in Settings > Sounds you can slide Ringer and Alerts to minimum. It'll still make sounds, just quietly. But again you run the risk of missing your phone ringing in some situations as it'll be quiet.

Edit: I noticed that on iOS 10.3, when you toggle the mute switch while the camera is open, it does not make any vibration. So you could just toggle it to mute before you take the picture, and then toggle back to normal when you're done.

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  • Okay, I guess that qualifies according to the way I worded the question, but I want to silence the shutter sound effect independently (mainly because the vibration that comes as a side effect is also too loud for certain settings, which means this doesn't actually silence my phone).
    – iconoclast
    Commented Dec 19, 2016 at 17:01
  • @iconoclast Edited to address that concern. Let me know if this solves your question!
    – kal-al
    Commented Dec 20, 2016 at 3:15
  • so it sounds like there's no way to do this without side effects? that is, no way to simply turn off the camera shutter sound without turning something else off in the process?
    – iconoclast
    Commented Dec 20, 2016 at 15:51
  • @iconoclast That's about the size of it. You can put your thumb over the speaker as in your answer to quiet the phone for all kinds of things, but that won't work for iPads with larger speakers, and if you have one finger on the home button and one finger on the power button to make a screenshot, you might have a slightly harder time covering the speaker. Whether you cover the speaker or disable vibrations and toggle it to silent right before your screenshot and toggle it to normal right after, you won't have to deal with the noise.
    – kal-al
    Commented Dec 20, 2016 at 20:16
  • Note that in Japan, and possibly other countries, the shutter noise (for photos, or for screenshots) cannot be turned off without a jailbreak. In that case, the thumb over the speaker grille is the only way to go.
    – Kent
    Commented Dec 20, 2016 at 23:07
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In some ways this answer I'm about to give is a horrible kludge, but it's quick and somewhat effective. Kal-al's answer (please up-vote it!) may be more useful to some people, but it appears that Apple has given us no way to electronically silence the camera shutter sound effect. The software offers no interface to independently do this, without some side effect of silencing something else.

Therefore, the simplest and quickest way I've found is a low-tech and utterly physical solution: to put your thumb over the speaker on the right side of the base of your phone. If you have a case on your phone it will be less effective. If you have no case it will do a fairly good job muffling any sound coming out of the speaker. Whether it's quiet enough for you depends on your situation. Perhaps if this is combined with some aspects of Kal-al's answer, you might be able to make the sound negligible.

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I found an option (on an Ipad) that will make it so that ringers and alerts will not be silenced. Hope this helps.

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  • What would improve this answer is if you directed the reader to where this option is located. What’s the name if the option? How do you get to it? What must the option be set to?
    – Allan
    Commented Jul 30, 2020 at 18:14

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