Problem: When someone presses my doorbell, the notification alert that gets sent through to my phone is too quiet that I often miss it.
To be clear, there IS a notification sound - a chime - that is announced on my iPhone, along with a banner notification, when someone rings my doorbell. The problem is that the sound is a lot quieter than every other notification I receive.
I have my ringer volume turned up full, so every other message or phone call shocks the entire household when it goes off, just so that I have a chance of hearing my front door. To paint a picture of the volume on full - if my phone is right next to me and the room is silent then I will hear the doorbell chime (not loudly, and could be easily missed if I was to be shuffling papers or opening and closing drawers etc). If there is music playing, absolutely no chance I would hear the notification of the doorbell, but I WOULD hear all other notification loud and clear. If I turn the phones overall volume down, the doorbell notification gets even quieter.
So, is the problem the volume or perhaps the sound of the chime? Who knows. Perhaps I’ll use a decibel checker to confirm. Either way, as you can imagine, I am always missing the door and people end up rattling on the doors and windows (at the front of the house) to try and get our attention (from the back of the house or upstairs study).
Google tell me the problem is with Apple, Apple tell me the problem is with Google. Where to go from here?
There are no settings within the Nest app for iOs, the Google Home app for iOs or on the iPhone itself to turn up/adjust the volume of the notifications that the doorbell sends through. I cannot find an option to change the tone/sound/chime itself to a different sound. I have Amazon’s Alexa dots throughout the home, which I believe cannot be linked to the Nest Hello wired doorbell. I am aware that I could purchase an ADDITIONAL product (either a Google home device, or a simple doorbell plug-in device) but I do not want to limit the alert going to one place. The idea of this doorbell is it is supposed to be able to alert us of someone at the door wherever we are - be it at home or away from home. For us, having the notifications/alerts to our phones should be plenty as we each have our phones fairly near by the majority of the time.
Has anyone found any solutions to this problem? If I could find a way to increase the volume of the notification to the phone(s), or link it to our existing Alexa smart home then that would suffice us plenty, but I loathe the idea of spending more money because the originally expensive gift is simply inadequate. Even if there are any hacks that anyone has managed to devise to ‘cope with’ the problem?
Why not return it and get a different brand? Well, we were gifted the doorbell as a congrats on your ‘first home’ present, so I don’t personally have the receipt (and feel it’s too rude to ask for the receipt claiming the product isn’t up to standard when someone’s clearly spent some money on such a kind present for our new home). We also already paid the electrician to come and install the device so we’ve also spent additional funds on the setting up of the doorbell.
Details:
Nest Hello - doorbell (wired)
iPhone 12 mini
iOs 16.5.1 (up to date)
Nest app 5.71.0 (up to date)
Google home app 3.3.104 (up to date)
