alt.hn

3/12/2026 at 5:13:56 PM

Bubble Sorted Amen Break

 https://parametricavocado.itch.io/amen-sorting

by eieio

3/12/2026 at 6:57:00 PM

I wish it'd play through the whole thing in order at the end

by Retr0id

3/12/2026 at 8:15:09 PM

100% this. Because I'm a masochist, I let it run through 128 random slices. Took maybe 15 mins (wasn't timing or anything). Definitely deserved the payoff at the end to hear the whole thing.

by robot_jesus

3/13/2026 at 2:00:39 PM

I anticipated this problem and increased the BPM to get through it in about 30s to see if it'd be worth the time haha.

by theowaway213456

3/13/2026 at 2:10:46 PM

[dead]

by cindyllm

3/12/2026 at 8:41:11 PM

If you never play the original sample, you never have to worry about royalties.

:rollsafe-think-about-it:

by teach

3/13/2026 at 8:47:15 AM

> If you never play the original sample, you never have to worry about royalties.

Even if you do, you don't.[0]

[0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-34785551

by zimpenfish

3/13/2026 at 1:19:27 PM

If I’d known, I would have contributed.

Alas it would have been too late for Gregory Coleman himself.

Is there a statue of him somewhere?

by zeristor

3/12/2026 at 9:32:30 PM

You don't know it by heart even yet, after all the time it's been in countless songs?

by telesilla

3/12/2026 at 9:51:05 PM

I haven't heard it in the original order many times!

by Retr0id

3/12/2026 at 9:18:36 PM

The unshuffled song: https://youtu.be/qwQLk7NcpO4 :)

(Same here - though at least so I learned about the Amen Break.)

by xg15

3/12/2026 at 5:13:56 PM

(the amen break is one of the most commonly-sampled drum breaks in popular music: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amen_break)

by eieio

3/12/2026 at 5:35:49 PM

And a tragic story at that:

>Coleman died homeless and destitute in 2006. It was unlikely he was aware of the impact he had made on music. Neither he [band leader Spencer] nor Coleman received royalties for the break.

by zonkerdonker

3/12/2026 at 7:12:32 PM

"Samples" were kind of like musical memes in the 1980s. What made for a good sample had a lot more to do with convenience and luck. The sounds that were picked for drum samples had more to do with how useful they were - the dynamic range, how isolated the drums are, how easy they were to mix.

The other famous drum sample - the "Funky Drummer" as drummed by Clyde Stubblefield for James Brown, Stubblefield didn't think the particular drum pattern he used was particularly noteworthy. In that case, James Brown's production choices were actually more key - his signature sound revolved around really crisp drums that he insisted needed to be clear on AM Radio and Jukeboxes. Which is what made it so useful for sampling.

by legitster

3/13/2026 at 8:53:11 AM

I saw a video about popular/influential/most-used samples the other week[0] and it mentioned James Brown becoming aware of sampling (I guess mid-late 90s?) and specifically making sure that anything he thought might be sample-able was "clean" from that point on.

[0] GFL finding anything in YouTube history / search these days hence no link. Wasn't from Synthet, I don't think.

by zimpenfish

3/13/2026 at 10:29:23 AM

You said it wasn't from Synthet, but they did release a video ~2 weeks ago which talked about exactly that. Super interesting, whether it's the correct video or not!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K71XefOlJh0

by jammaloo

3/13/2026 at 11:32:26 PM

> You said it wasn't from Synthet, but they did release a video ~2 weeks ago which talked about exactly that.

Good grief, I thought it might be that video but somehow completely blanked on it when I double-checked and decided it wasn't. Thanks for actually checking usefully!

(Synthet videos are almost always worth a watch even if you can't remember them a couple of weeks later. Old age, innit.)

by zimpenfish

3/13/2026 at 12:24:59 AM

Maybe, but the amen break has a very specific je ne sais quoi that makes it way more useful and pleasant as a sample than almost any other sample. There's just so many situations in the kind of music I make where the amen is like the only loop that fits. Funky drummer might come in second.

It could just be its cultural weight has me hypnotized. But maybe its just that good

by pdntspa

3/13/2026 at 4:47:50 AM

I’ve produced music through much of 2010-2020, I wasn’t there in the 1980-2010s but it wasn’t uncommon see discussion online about different samples or things like this. Never really seen any mention something like this unquantified “je ne sais quoi” or at least don’t really recall

My take is, it was the first of its kind to widely circulate exhibiting desirable quantities for sampling, a combination of good enough and path dependency. After a certain level of saturation/entrenchment it carried an aesthetic compared to readily available samples (maybe this is what you meant).

Whenever I couldn’t find a breakbeat sample (or wanted some starting point at least) I’d default to it. When I did music production it was very easy to get your hands on a loop but obviously that’s much later.

by akst

3/14/2026 at 6:12:29 PM

amen and funky drummer are fun but I find it funner to chop up the apache break. it's got a little bongo in there

by jamal-kumar

3/12/2026 at 9:58:54 PM

Samplers became accessible at the time which allowed music production with just loops. Look at snap I got the power. All looped samples

by WhiteOwlLion

3/12/2026 at 10:15:29 PM

I mean, look at any house or hip-hop track, sampling's like the most fundamental part of both genres.

The track you've mentioned is the prime example of the blend of those two genres. Before the term Eurodance caught on, this track would be referred to as hip-house (as in hip-hop + house). Chicago and the broader NY area did it first, but it was a Belgian track that first topped the US charts (Technotronic's Pump Up The Jam).

by input_sh

3/12/2026 at 11:39:38 PM

That's why one of the super simple improvements I'd make to music copyright law, if I had to choose one thing rather than a massive overhaul, is for sampling to also be subject to the compulsory mechanical royalty system.

So any artist could sample something, do some paperwork, and send of a fraction of royalties. Rather than the current system where you need explicit permission from the recording artist and have no recourse if they say no.

So many music genres exist because of sampling, and the shit legal precedents set in recent decades ruined an amazing thing.

by redwall_hp

3/13/2026 at 12:54:46 PM

Your proposal makes complete sense and would allow artists the creative freedom to use samples in unusual and novel ways that the original artist might never have envisioned – or agreed to.

I’m a big fan of the KLF (Kopyright Liberation Front) and when the artist says “no”, I’m always reminded of this funny, surreal story about the KLF physically destroying their music: http://klf.de/home/the-abba-incident/

by Anthony-G

3/13/2026 at 12:51:10 AM

Completely agree with you, but good music always finds its way around copyright, you just can't find it on streaming services.

For example, if the sample's small enough to not be recognisable by algorithms, they often end up on Soundcloud with a free download via Hypeddit. Some even get away with charging money for their track with non-cleared samples via Bandcamp. Because those types of bedroom producers are almost always clueless about copyright, they often cite fair use in the description and choose a Creative Commons licence, which is not how anything works. Even some B-list celebrities that damn well know what they're doing still decide to do that when they fail to clear a sample. Soundcloud would be completely irrelevant if they did a good-enough job at enforcing copyright, so they do the bare minimum labels require of them to keep running, but that definitely kills their odds of ever competing with the likes of Spotify.

Then there's a whole "gray area" of online record pools where the audio preview and download links are hidden behind a $25/month or so paywall, so record labels can't scan it directly to even know about the infringement. Usually just listing the names of available tracks in HTML is enough to get them de-indexed from Google, but they rely on word-of-mouth anyway.

And, of course, even if all of that were to stop, you can never prevent a bunch of DJs and producers DMing each other tracks, hottest of which always end up getting shared too widely at some point and uploaded to Soulseek or something.

Meanwhile, streaming services are being flooded by unethically-trained, AI-generated music, which is actually incredibly easy to detect if streaming services actually gave enough of a fuck to do so. There is one that gives a fuck rather publicly (Deezer) and according to them, it's ~34% of everything uploaded as of a few months ago, may have passed 40% as of now.

by input_sh

3/13/2026 at 6:41:04 AM

> Belgian track

What a wasted chance to say "Belgian techno anthem"!

by riffraff

3/12/2026 at 5:53:14 PM

I’ve heard conflicting accounts about their knowledge and royalties.

While I’m certain they didn’t receive royalties from all artists, I heard many 80s artists did. And Amen Brothers took others to court. So they would have know about the use of the break.

I will admit I haven’t done any independent research into this matter personally. Just echoing accounts I’ve read and taking their reports at face value.

by hnlmorg

3/12/2026 at 8:04:29 PM

> And Amen Brothers took others to court.

Who is "Amen Brothers"?

by corndoge

3/12/2026 at 10:00:18 PM

"Amen, Brother" is the name of the track it's from, so the parent is likely referring to the band.

by input_sh

3/13/2026 at 12:08:48 AM

Yeah, the band is The Winstons. I'm curious how parent knew that they went to court when they don't know the name of the band.

by corndoge

3/13/2026 at 2:23:56 AM

> I'm curious how parent knew that they went to court

I didn’t say I knew they went to court. I just said I thought I read about it.

Looking into it again now, all I can find is a 10+ year old article about a crowd fund (eg https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-34785551). So I’m likely misremembering what I read previously.

> when they don't know the name of the band.

I just got the name of the band muddled with the name of the song. I also sometimes get get the names of my friends and loved ones muddled. But that doesn’t mean I don’t know them either. I’m just shit with names.

I do however remember every useless number I learned as a child. Including phone numbers to kids TV shows. Human memory is weird :-/

by hnlmorg

3/13/2026 at 2:38:52 PM

It’s pronounced “Allman Brothers”

by epcoa

3/13/2026 at 2:51:22 PM

It's pronounced "Doobie Brothers"

by skvmb

3/12/2026 at 8:35:40 PM

That's true, though there was a community fundraising a while back. Many well known dnb and jungle dj's donated there.

https://ra.co/news/28370

by araker

3/12/2026 at 6:05:47 PM

A reminder that your society will be judged not on how the most fortunate lived but how the least fortunate lived. Context still matters but there's a meaningful difference between "Anne Brontë died of Consumption (Tuberculosis), at that time there was no cure" and "Dave died of TB, he couldn't afford the cure at current market prices".

by tialaramex

3/12/2026 at 7:16:09 PM

What is a mote in such a society to do though? Dave couldn't afford the cure, but neither can I. What do you suggest I do to make it affordable for both of us?

by fragmede

3/12/2026 at 6:58:48 PM

Sure. Which is your society though?

by verisimi

3/12/2026 at 11:40:40 PM

Unless you are one of the rare unintegrated humans†, in which case you wouldn't read HN because you don't have any of the necessary technology, there is only a single human society. Given that, we should be uncomfortable about how we're doing on that "least fortunate" thing...

† https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncontacted_peoples

by tialaramex

3/13/2026 at 7:30:08 AM

So why is it not our society? Are you an unintegrated human, hence why you have the external view on things?

by verisimi

3/13/2026 at 7:47:54 AM

No need to nitpick. Being one among many in an X, one can perfectly use "our X", "my X" and "your X" to denote the same X, there is no logical error in that.

Now, the connotation is different: saying "our X will be judged by.." spreads the responsibility among everyone and makes it too easy to shift the blame onto the next guy, while saying "your X will be judged by.." stresses on your personal contribution to the X, making it not that easy to shy away.

by wartywhoa23

3/13/2026 at 2:30:28 PM

I think the personal pronoun you use is very interesting.

In your case, you seemed to be representing the common idea of a different culture, ie 'my society thought your society was this or that', eg 'Muslims think western societies to be greedy and unkind'.

Do you really think of yourself as one of many? If so, which type do you identify as? And then, do you think you are personally responsible for the actions of others of your type?

I personally think the general usage of a general collective pronouns to be inevitably misleading, but has the benefit of allowing one's preferred poor and unsubstantiated beliefs to be stated as indisputable fact.

by verisimi

3/12/2026 at 7:34:42 PM

This is our manifesto. We are creative people. Here is our strategy for advancing creative work and supporting the people who do it.

We upvote comments that completely miss the point of how this algorithm works. We upvote comments that claim the algorithm does nothing at all. We downvote comments about how the creator of the original drum break died destitute.

by creative-9

3/12/2026 at 6:00:41 PM

My personal prize for the most chopped amen goes to Breakage’s Final mix of Equinox’s Acid Rain VIP. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoKlz6_I4vY

by robin_reala

3/12/2026 at 7:10:15 PM

Worlds colliding here.

We're dropping amen selections now?

Some classics that sound like what the app is sortin':

Remarc - Sound Murderer (Loafin' in Brockley Mix) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SUdpCVITxc

Splash - Babylon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vghx8SEeH8

DJ Krome & Mr. Time - The License https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPa5JBg8hZI

Source Direct - Secret Liason https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfEWCVoB45s

Danny Breaks - Droppin' Science Vol 1A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqZT-Jse5rQ

by ChrisArchitect

3/13/2026 at 9:57:06 AM

Thanks heaps! I very much love the 'old-school' jungle/uk-hardcore sound and didn't know about these more recent Suburban Base releases, and your other reccs were also great too! Amen break went soooo far!

My particular favourite is in demoscene tracker music where Amen also went all over the place (and sampling more generally too!)

I'm not sure if the below is actual Amen-break (need to ask BrothomStates probably!) but it's certainly in the spirit of it and this is definitely near or at the top of my favourite demos ever, I just find it so damned cool! "The Day the Earth was Born" by TPOLM:

https://youtu.be/rt8cOLZHQ4c?si=Y323k8qog3Tv8uou

by danwills

3/13/2026 at 11:45:05 PM

High five fellow DnB heads :)

That Source Direct release was out of this world... absolutely beautiful body of work

by comprev

3/13/2026 at 4:24:53 PM

Very nice. But surely the most chopped up amen break is Virtual Riot's Death by Amen.

https://youtu.be/XpnNVWOC98A

by brantmv

3/12/2026 at 8:51:31 PM

Love that tune. Some of my personal favorites, amen andrews - jungle bunny, doc scott - here comes the drumz (breakage remix), loxy & ink - murder inc (twisted anger remix), pendulum - through the loop, dj hidden - times like these

by araker

3/12/2026 at 6:27:12 PM

Wow I've heard pieces of this but never the full thing, incredible

by bouk

3/13/2026 at 1:33:57 PM

And hand chopped! I remember them playing an early version of this on bbc radio 1 (1extra?). That version was a bit rougher but better imho

by thenthenthen

3/12/2026 at 7:27:11 PM

Hype for Equinox in Sheffield on Sat

by butterknife

3/12/2026 at 5:33:42 PM

Cool, but I don't see how it's sorting anything. It just seems to play a randomized arrangement of the slices. You can re-randomize as much as you like but there's no sort option as far as I can see.

by staplung

3/12/2026 at 5:44:48 PM

It randomizes slices of the sample and begins to play the slices in the random order. Meanwhile it begins the bubble sort algorithm at a pace that matches the tempo, sorting the slices into their chronological order. Throughout, it only plays the unsorted slices. (I was kinda hoping it would play the sorted sample at the end.)

by joeypickles

3/12/2026 at 6:16:26 PM

I actually wanted it to play them as it went, so that it would be <unsorted><sorted> each time through, with the former shrinking and the latter growing.

by icambron

3/12/2026 at 6:12:44 PM

The idea is that it slices the Amen Break into however many slices you specify, and the list being sorted is the indices for those slices. At each step, it plays the slice the pivot is being compared to.

Because it only plays the samples being compared, it never plays the sorted chunks, so it's missing a "punchline" of sorts.

by pdpi

3/12/2026 at 9:52:20 PM

I was surprised at how frustrating it was to not hear the sorted result at the end.

by actionfromafar

3/12/2026 at 5:46:04 PM

You're right. It doesn't play the sorted parts, which is strange. I expected to have a series of random-then-controlled slices with the random part getting shorter and the controlled part getting longer, but it really is just a shortening loop of random beats.

by hyperhello

3/12/2026 at 6:38:48 PM

Would have been cool if it played the sorted ones at the end as a final run through victory lap

by butlike

3/12/2026 at 5:40:38 PM

Did you play it to the end? It's absolutely sorting from smallest to largest. Unless you have a confused understanding of a bubble sort, it's doing a bubble sort

by dylan604

3/12/2026 at 5:44:24 PM

Not the OP but I stopped listening pretty quickly because I was confused about how it was sorted.

It wasn’t until I read your comment that I realised the sorting happened while you were listening rather than before hand.

by hnlmorg

3/12/2026 at 6:02:21 PM

Same! thanks for saving the experience for me :)

by ricardobeat

3/12/2026 at 6:14:58 PM

So it's sorting from earliest to latest, really?

by lxgr

3/12/2026 at 6:19:33 PM

The value that is being sorted isn't obvious to me. It's obvious that it is sorting it. I'm guessing maybe some dB level of each of the hits/notes. If that was the case, I'd expect the initial unsorted view to line up with the pattern of the waveforms which is not the case. Maybe it's just an unsorted list of values sorted in sync to the rhythm. It's weird though that the segment corresponds to a segment of the audio. I just don't see how they are linked.

by dylan604

3/12/2026 at 6:34:16 PM

It's sorting by index of the slice. Pressing "shuffle" jumbles the slices up. So it puts the slices of the break back in the correct order. You never hear the result.

Set it to 8 slices and it becomes easy to see what it's doing: look at the waveform and the now-playing highlight jumping around.

by scrumper

3/13/2026 at 10:44:31 AM

I was confused at first at what the different "levels" mean. But they're not levels, they're just indices.

I would suggest the author changes the UI to just show a number instead of a bar, to make this clearer.

by OrangeMusic

3/12/2026 at 5:37:36 PM

Give it a minute or two.

by throwuxiytayq

3/13/2026 at 3:15:03 PM

It’s sorting by time

by cush

3/12/2026 at 5:32:08 PM

That's a fun two minutes for any computer scientist drum and bass fan.

by exDM69

3/12/2026 at 5:43:43 PM

I can't help laughing. This is great.

I don't understand the comparison function, but it's really enjoyable listening to the algorithm work out its logic.

by marssaxman

3/12/2026 at 10:31:04 PM

It's comparing the t value.

by cocodill

3/13/2026 at 3:30:52 PM

That is so much simpler than any of the possibilities I had imagined!

by marssaxman

3/12/2026 at 6:42:10 PM

Not playing it all the way through at the end is diabolical.

by empath75

3/13/2026 at 6:46:32 AM

This documentary from 2004 (uploaded to YouTube in 2006(!)) is how I learned about the Amen Break and it's immense influence on the music of the 80s and 90s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SaFTm2bcac

by efortune

3/12/2026 at 6:51:09 PM

This deserves the top spot on the front page!

Might I ask for the implementation of other sorting algorithms here?

by nvader

3/12/2026 at 5:40:39 PM

It sounds like a Ventian Snares track. Love it.

by sandwell

3/14/2026 at 7:41:41 AM

I just put on a Venetian Snares album (Rossz Csillag Alatt Született) and thought I'd come back here to say the same as you have!

I'd also add: It's like Aaron's whole career is slightly resting atop Amen Break, at least as far back as (first I heard and still my favorite) The Chocolate Wheelchair Album! Amazing detailed work with Amen and similar samples that's for sure!

by danwills

3/13/2026 at 4:33:12 AM

This is one of those things you see and get angry you didn't wake up the idea first. It's so perfect and just as satisfying as you'd hope. Incredible stuff!

by dag11

3/12/2026 at 9:08:41 PM

This afternoon I was getting the oil changed for my car, and while I was in the waiting room the Amen Break started playing from a nearby speaker.

by regus

3/13/2026 at 7:14:25 PM

Cool but I'm a bit confused - bubble sorted by what, exactly? Like what is the y-axis?

by _nothing

3/13/2026 at 7:29:40 PM

Y is essentially the order. If you take the recording and start slicing. The first slices are the smaller ones and the later slices are the taller ones.

by zwarag

3/12/2026 at 5:57:45 PM

I would have expected it to be terrible to listen to, but it was pretty nice.

by onionisafruit

3/13/2026 at 8:28:58 AM

Would love to hear it unsorting the same array.

by seu

3/13/2026 at 6:09:08 AM

Should I understand what this is trying to show?

by rullelito

3/12/2026 at 6:58:21 PM

429 Too Many Requests

by ttyyzz

3/12/2026 at 10:27:40 PM

At first I didn't understand, but then I did.

by cocodill

3/12/2026 at 6:15:28 PM

I need WebGL to play audio on HTML pages now?

by uoaei

3/12/2026 at 7:06:43 PM

it's an application built with webgl that plays audio, rather than just an audio player

by probabletrain

3/12/2026 at 6:56:23 PM

Can someone explain the comparison function?

by idontwantthis

3/12/2026 at 6:12:00 PM

This is bonkers and I love it.

by evereverever

3/12/2026 at 9:04:11 PM

tbh i expect it to be much more interesting if doing other kind of sorts

by larodi

3/12/2026 at 9:43:48 PM

This is unreasonably fun.

by suzdude

3/12/2026 at 11:03:02 PM

what is the y axis on that graph? what are we sorting?

by guelo

3/13/2026 at 9:39:01 AM

Is that IDM ?

by zachromorp

3/12/2026 at 6:52:22 PM

-100 points for not having a volume slider.

by jatari

3/13/2026 at 5:52:29 AM

lol, that's the stupidest thing that I've ever watched all the way through with a grin the whole time.

by knodi123

3/12/2026 at 8:51:18 PM

Can we get an Amen quicksort now?

by Negitivefrags

3/12/2026 at 7:09:20 PM

[flagged]

by themarogee

3/12/2026 at 5:47:59 PM

No sound on iPhone. Shame Apple is so hostile to the web. Tragic really.

by braebo

3/12/2026 at 5:51:43 PM

iOS seems to mute the web audio apis when the phone is in silent mode (the switch on the side of the phone). If you toggle it on, then this site (and many others) play sound.

I have no idea why it works this way and it’s frequently annoying.

by quag

3/12/2026 at 6:00:18 PM

Why wouldn't it work that way? Whether it's a hardware toggle like on iPhone or a software one like in Android, I want silent to mean silent. Not "silent but if a web page decides to play sound it can".

by bigstrat2003

3/12/2026 at 6:13:06 PM

There is some amount of the "Focus follows brain" problem here. What we want is for things to do what we meant, all the time, and in this case it's very possible that the visitor wanted to hear the music. It is not practical (without yet to invented technology) for that to work so we have a substitute - there's a switch and you should remember to press it.

"Focus follows brain" is how everybody wants windowed UIs to work. When I type on the keyboard the letters go where my brain thought they should go - duh, but of course that's unimplementable, so the Windows UI provides "Click to focus" - if I click on a Window the typing goes there until I click another window, meanwhile some Unix systems do "Focus follows Mouse" - if I move the mouse over a Window then my typing goes there even without clicking. Neither is what we actually wanted, both are trying to approximate.

by tialaramex

3/12/2026 at 7:29:39 PM

Many many times I have music playing in the background from another app while browsing. So no, there’s no way to focus follow brain. There’s just no way for this device to know what I want unless I tell it

by dylan604

3/12/2026 at 6:17:06 PM

The phone will still make sound if I launch a music app, why is a web page different?

And I hate web pages making sound! But the UX is confusing, and it’s changed over the years, seemingly without reason.

Iphones now have a software toggle as well, which may have coincided with the shift from “mute ringer” to “mute (almost) everything” that came with the multifunction button.

by relaxing

3/13/2026 at 12:21:16 AM

> why is a web page different?

Web browsers on desktop operating systems initially allowed any website to play audio without any interaction required. Some websites would blast annoying audio ads as soon as you opened a page on their site. So effort was put into making it so that web browsers on desktops would only play sound after user interaction via mouse click. Later, some websites were exempted from that by some desktop web browsers, for example YouTube I think.

Even without ads, background noise that starts automatically as soon as you visit a page can be distracting and disruptive.

I’m perfectly happy that Safari on iOS does not play background audio when I have my phone in silent mode. Even when I have tapped on buttons on the page.

Silent mode is not entirely only for notifications anyway. The built-in keyboard is also silent in silent mode, whereas when silent mode is off it makes an annoying click sound for every button that you press. Likewise the builtin camera app on iOS makes a shutter sound when you take photos with silent mode off. With silent mode the camera app is silent. Same with taking screenshots. I take a lot of screenshots, and prefer that people around me don’t think I’m taking photos when I am taking a screenshot on the phone.

Meanwhile, if I open a music player app on my phone and hit play, I have made a very deliberate choice about playing sound.

All of the games on my phone I can think of are also silent in silent mode. Not sure if all games have to be silent in silent mode or not on iOS (i.e. if “can play sound in silent mode” is a special permission in iOS and if Apple disallows apps categorized as games in App Store from having that permission or not). But I like that the games I play on my phone are silent in silent mode.

There is some inconsistency indeed about what is silent or not, but I am happy with the way that it is as someone who prefers surprising silence over surprising noises from my phone when it’s in silent mode.

by QuantumNomad_

3/13/2026 at 10:27:51 PM

That screenshot matrix gets painful quickly once devices/locales grow. Are you doing iOS/Android and roughly how many locales x sizes?

by ShipScreens

3/14/2026 at 11:09:04 AM

Was this comment posted by a bot?

by QuantumNomad_

3/12/2026 at 6:51:57 PM

Because silent mode is for the notifications. App volume has its own dedicated buttons.

by LordDragonfang

3/12/2026 at 7:05:30 PM

media sound is generally unaffected by the silent mode toggle, which apple suggests is only for notifications. but the toggle inconsistently affects media, muting some things but not others. it's incredibly frustrating. android has much better audio controls for notifications, media, alarms, and vibrate.

by probabletrain

3/12/2026 at 7:28:15 PM

How old of an iPhone does one need to have that switch? My 6S+ has one, but a 15 doesn’t.

by dylan604

3/12/2026 at 10:53:52 PM

My 14 has the switch. I believe the 15 is when they switched to a programmable "action" button in place of the switch.

by sertsa

3/12/2026 at 7:18:05 PM

I can hear it. Chrome on iOS 26.

by fragmede