Phone and Tablet Tips

If you’re hard of hearing, or want to put your headphones on without missing the doorbell ringing or baby crying, ask your phone to listen out for you. iOS 14, which runs on any iPhone from the 6S onwards, now features sound recognition, which will alert you when it hears any one of 11 different sounds, including smoke alarms, sirens and dogs barking.

It isn’t enabled by default, but you’ll find it in Settings. Tap ‘Accessibility’, followed by Sound Recognition, and tap the slider at the top of the following screen. Now tap ‘Sounds’ and select which noises you’d like it to alert you to. Doing so disables Siri’s “Hey Siri” function until