Feature request (Apple Watch) - Important quality of life improvement for seniors
Please allow Apple Watch users to choose from a variety of incoming text message alert tones and increase the maximum volume. The only option is a high-pitched ding, which is hard for older users to hear and impossible for users with hearing loss to hear while music or a TV is on. The tone chosen by Apple for this ding is essentially a textbook example of the frequencies of human hearing that are lost as we age. It is also not very loud for users with hearing loss. If you cannot both enable a variety of alert tones and increase the max volume on the watch, then please allow users to chose to receive text alerts on their phones instead.
Ever since I bought Apple Watches for my elderly parents, they have been unable to reliably receive text messages in a timely manner (oftentimes they only notice texts hours later upon looking at their phones). Before we bought Apple watches, they could easily hear the incoming text message alert tone on their phones and see the text immediately. Now, the high-pitched ding on their watches easily blends in with music or TV noise. We have the sound turned up to max volume and haptics on prominent. Those settings are insufficient. It's possible the watch keeps going into silent mode without them purposefully enabling it (?) as they do not always notice the haptics either.
Please either allow Apple watch users to CHOOSE whether they want to be notified of texts on their phone and/or watch, or allow them to CHOOSE the alert tone emitted by the watch (and enable the max volume to be as loud as the phone's max volume).
I saw old threads in this forum from many users complaining that Apple has taken the choice of where to receive text message alerts away from them, and they have been forced to forgo most of the features of the Apple Watch by disabling wrist detection, just so their phones would notify them of text messages. That is not a good option - why would users even buy an Apple Watch if they are forced to turn wrist detection off and lose important features?
Thanks for considering this request.
Apple Watch Series 7
