Beter manage alarm notification alerts and responses in iOS - PRO 2

[kylewallace]

Hello, is someone from Arlo able to provide an update on custom notification sounds for iOS? Been a few years since I asked so thought I would check again 😉

[ShayneS]

Hey @kylewallace

Thanks for the follow-up. I will be sure to provide an announcement if this feature is released.

[BrantleyIV]

Why isn’t there an option to change the sound notification on iOS? When my phone dings at night, I can’t tell the difference between someone sending me a Facebook friend request or sneaking up to my back door at night to kill mu wife and I and that seems like a pretty important distinction to have.

This feature is available on Android and seems like a simple addition. What the heck?

I can’t do anything within my iOS setting because I cannot change notification sounds on the App level like Android OS can , and if I want to turn on ‘do not disturb’ at night so I only get Arlo notifications, I can’t do that either because I cannot put ‘do not disturb’ app overrides like you can on Android OS. It seems like Apple and ironically Arlo are screwing us on home security. Arlo said this feature was coming out ‘soon’ in February 2017... how long does it take ?

[Gabe343]

https://www.causes.com/campaigns/921334-arlo-please-change-the-ios-notification-sound-settings

[Harrow61]

USER- Use case 1  (family with wives and children – sound familiar ?)

After, for the 2nd time beautifully capturing someone breaking into equipment in the driveway -  who was further totally indifferent to the ARLO LIGHT and linked LIFX lights turning on - Just pulled his hoodie up a little higher.

and as I cannot enable the  ARLO base station alarm due to the # of false alarms at night and  the fact that I have infants, that I do not want to be disturbed / traumatised by every false alarm - and a wife who is most understandably most unappreciative of such alarms.

I absolutely need to be able to manage the IOS Alert settings - so when I’m sleeping, my iPhone which is always in my  Immediate proximity can robustly alert , just me !  - without disturbing the whole goddamed household and neighbours  . 

Otherwise my $800 investment - or so I thought,  is utterly useless to protect my family and assets - as I cannot effectively as use it in a well-managed manner as a deterrent.

Further :- As its  4am in the morning (think deep sleep REM) - or it was the last 2 times - having a live sound and Image of the camera in question directly displayed in the unlock / notification centre - will allow a rapid assessment of the situation  and then the response - i.e.  linked to the camera speaker - and have the base station alarm button accessible (but not inadvertently triggerable by someone just woken from a deep slumber) 

              :- As I travel extensively for work -  my wife needs to take over this role, in my absence - Indeed this was my # 1 main NEED  when purchasing the system  was for it to act as a deterrent for when I'm away - without unnecessarily disturbing  the family or neighbourhood with false alerts (this is actually counterproductive - and desensitizes peoples response and leads to neighbourhood disputes ) - i did not purchase the system to record endless video of someone ripping me off blind .

Therefore - when I’m away and my Wife and children are alone and - someone or something  is setting off cameras at 4 AM - time is of the essence to have an, appropriate,  proportional  and effective  response.

     I.e. :- To allow the user to become rapidly fully situationally aware of the alert (Live video - in the lock / notification  screen)

               To immediately put at their disposal - if needed -the most effective and appropriate deterrent ( Talk / base alarm / police / alert friends) 

Requirements (to make it easy for you)

Ability to Provide and manage

Mandatory

      On an individual personal IOS device

      An alert for an individual camera ( Visual and/or sound detection)

                     Within user determinable times 

                    The required alert duration and intensity ( Sound selected / volume / duration/ Vibration / screen flash  

Ideal

      Providing immediate situational awareness (in notification centre / lock screen)

       Allow the user to immediately trigger an appropriate response  ( Talk / base alarm / police / alert friends) – or just curse that kangaroo and go back to sleep.

[Davisa5]

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@BrantleyIV wrote:
Why isn’t there an option to change the sound notification on iOS? When my phone dings at night, I can’t tell the difference between someone sending me a Facebook friend request or sneaking up to my back door at night to kill mu wife and I and that seems like a pretty important distinction to have.

This feature is available on Android and seems like a simple addition. What the heck?

I can’t do anything within my iOS setting because I cannot change notification sounds on the App level like Android OS can , and if I want to turn on ‘do not disturb’ at night so I only get Arlo notifications, I can’t do that either because I cannot put ‘do not disturb’ app overrides like you can on Android OS. It seems like Apple and ironically Arlo are screwing us on home security. Arlo said this feature was coming out ‘soon’ in February 2017... how long does it take ?

---

Fortunately, I only bought one small Arlo Q with a view to getting more later. I’ve decided to ditch it completely as clearly the company has no intention of fixing the notification problems. Surely the option to change the notification should be an easy fix, a regular option for many, many apps. They obviously don’t care about their customers. 

[LeNephy]

I agree. Just spent a grand on the Ultra and this makes it a useless toy. Simple to resolve. Lack of response makes me worry about the company

[Marc_Vador]

I agree, this is the weakest point of this material. Installed yesterday, otherwise happy, but that major weak point ruines the whole setup

[BetchTetsMcGee]

I am going BSC over not being able to change the sound...because this particular sound on my iPhone causes my dogs to bark (no clue why, and no amount of discipline is curbing the habit) and therefore wakes my infant and my toddler during nap times. I live in a subdivision...there’s CONSTANT movement!
And I can’t set it for particular times because we have people trespassing on our property during the day times quite often and at night people have broken into our cars.
For the sake of my sanity and my dogs getting to stay here for the rest of their lives, PLEASE give us an update to let us change this godforsaken sound!!!

[fisheye7]

Using iOS.
Add me on the list for a update on the Arlo app/system to enable customised notification sounds, or in the very least an ‘Arlo’ unique notification sound.
The current notification sound is the same as W.app and many others.
This makes it highly inefficient to be able to distinguish between a motion trigger (potentially a burglar) and a simple W.app message (probably totally unnecessary)!

I like and so far support Arlo so it would please many many current and future customers (as friends are asking about the Arlo system prior to purchase) if this feature was introduced.
Regards.

[ianfrombrisbane]

Spot on - and great suggestions. I've just installed my Pro 3, and these were the features I was immediately looking for. I've found that the current feature set is great, but it's "retrospective" in nature - I don't feel I'm empowered to respond immediately to a threat, I'd be about a minute or so behind the action while i fumble my way into the app.

In the meantime, I'm going to use an old iPhone 6 I no longer use, and keep this setup in the bedroom with just the Arlo app installed. Because we have iphones in "do not disturb" mode ON (which makes it useless for security), so this way if i do hear a notification in the middle of the night, I can at least tell that it's Arlo (but it shouldn't take a completely separate handset to achieve this).

Let's just hope I wake up to the default notification sound (which can't be changed). A "whooop! whooop!" sound would be better. (I'm an iOS app developer, and doing custom notification sounds in your app can be coded in a couple of hours - this is not hard for Arlo to do)!

[Marc_Vador]

Absolutely - and as I experience regularly "your base station is not connected to the internet" I bought a separate 4G routeur, and connected the Arlo station to a Wifi plug, so I could "reboot" the Arlo at distance, whenever there is that "connection failure". It is of course quite ironic when you are abroad and supposed to turn off and on again the Arlo manually to solve that recurrent problem ... 

[Mike-N]

I too find this missing feature (ability to customize notification sounds on iOS) to be really problematic, but for a different reason. The default sound scares the hell out of my dog.  So, I'm constantly turning my notifications option on and off. Yesterday, I forgot about this and was doing work in my carport under one of my cams, with my phone charging in the house (setting off a lot of alerts). I came inside and my husky had been cowering in the bathroom the whole time!

There's nothing I can do. If could simply find a less disturbing sound on my phone to use, I would be able to actually leave the security cameras in their intended security mode... with notifications enabled. However, it seems, the only time I can use the notifications now is when leaving the house with my phone. Or, manually on and off every night! Uhgg.

Please add ability to customize notification sounds to Arlo App for iOS. 

Mike

[VLM4030]

zaydamoz@gmail.com

[MattUpichu]

Agreed, the company seems to completely ignore the community. Another example is the nearly uselessly short power cord provided with the Arlo solar panel. There’s pages of threads complaining / requesting a longer one be made available, as Netgear has made the hardware propriety and incompatible... yet the only response I’ve seen from someone from the company in any of the many threads is to say they advise against attempting to modify or using third-party hardware to remedy the problem, as this will void warranty... it seems they could not care less about user feedback, and frankly, I wish I’d invested in Nest cameras.

[Kgl1971]

I agree with you 100% BrantleyIV. I was very surprised this morning to see that we had unexpected visitors walk up the side of our house during the night. Thankfully they realised quickly that they were at the wrong home and left quickly. I have not been able to find a way to change the sound alert on the numerous iOS devices we have. This one major flaw is essentially making the Arlo system completely ineffective during the night when you are asleep

[JeffoFitts]

Harrow61, egg'actly!  

So I added to https://community.arlo.com/t5/Arlo-Idea-Exchange/idb-p/arlo-idea-exchange

Why not not for it? https://community.arlo.com/t5/Arlo-Idea-Exchange/Customize-iOS-alarm-notification-alerts-and-respons...

While there, why not learn about the "hope" to 'join Arlo's A-Team to keep a close eye on product development, have a say in new design features, get the inside scoop from our product team and participate in special giveaways and contests.'  But if enrollment fails for you too, then vote-up my fix "idea": https://community.arlo.com/t5/Arlo-Idea-Exchange/Fix-Arlo-A-Team-enrollment/idi-p/1760081

[StephenB]

AFAIK that second link isn't related to Arlo at all.

[Metasouls]

It’s mid-2020 now and this isn’t fixed, sound notifications don’t work on iOS (only silent banner notifications), rendering my $1,000 investment useless. I run a very large YouTube channel, I guess my only resort is to put out bad (honest) reviews on Arlo being useless and who won’t listen to their community

[Francesca1]

Hello,

  I've got the same problem and I've been waiting for updates and hoping that eventually they would have fixed it. Too bad because for the rest all works perfectly but this is a major issue. I do not understand why it can't be solved.

[WillF]

Everyone who posted here is spot on and I can't believe over this much time it hasn't been addressed. I also just made this investment and everything is great about this camera except for this, which is very important. Recently had someone in my shed, and apparently was trying to get into my neighbors house with a ladder, he was not picked dup so I would like to be able to be notified if he returns. I understand that maybe integrating with apples notifications is the issue, but couldn't this feature just be developed through the arlo app itself?? I hope to see some sort of response to this but it doesn't look promising! Thanks!

[ianfrombrisbane]

This is totally in Arlo’s control. The sound is injected into the application itself, and the push notification just asks for that sound to be played (rather than the default iOS sound). I’m an iOS developer, and it’s about 5 lines of code to make this happen!

[chicproduction]

I just invested and the same I cannot have an alarm if I have an intruder at night! I called Arlo and they sent me to this forum to "SUGGEST" what I wish! People been suggesting the same requests since 2017! What more do they need! 

[Nexus84]

Agreed. Wake up Arlo !!

[Alatron2]

One workaround is to set email notifications to text using your carriers assigned email. For example I have T-Mobile, so under email alerts on Arlo, I set to email my phone # @tmomail.net. When they send the “email” notification it actually ends up as a text on my phone. I assigned that contact it’s own ringtone.

Then you can save the Arlo text contact to your favorites and still get notifications while do not disturb is enabled.

It is slightly delayed from the notification but gets the job done.

[blindkarma]

Yes, they never fixed this. Also introduced new problems with app updates, like the green screen in live view unless you subscribe to Arlo's cloud service. Poor customer service, poor battery life and failure to fix simple things has killed off the Arlo brand. I equate Arlo with planned obsolescence. Not even going to consider the newer Arlo devices when I replace this system.