Check How to check if the audio level on your phone, laptop is too loud

Headphones have become an integral part of people’s lives, ever since work from home phenomena was thrust upon them. Video calls, conferences or just normal audio calls on phones and laptops have increased significantly — and thus the need for headphones. Or you may just be listening to music to unwind yourself or while working out. So what’s the optimum decibel level that won’t cause long-term damage to your ears? Experts say anything below 80 decibel levels is good and safe. But how do you check the decibel levels on your smartphone or laptops? Here we tell you how to do that:


Checking decibel levels on an iPhone

Apple takes the health of your ears rather seriously. On the Watch, you will find a noise app that will tell you if the decibel levels are too high, say if you are in a market place or train station. On the iPhone as well, there’s a feature which can tell you how to check decibel levels. It works with headphones (we checked with the AirPods Pro) and environmental sounds. The feature works well with any Bluetooth headphones or even with wired headphones that you may use with the iPhone. Here are the steps to know decibel levels are high or low on your iPhone:

How to check decibel levels on Android phones

There’s no native checking of decibel levels on Android phones. However, there are plenty of third-party apps that are available on Google Play Store that can help you know this. Some of the popular ones are Sound Meter, Decibel Meter, DB Meter among others.

Android phones, however, do have the feature to give a pop up warning if the audio on the headphones is too high. Samsung does this in a colour-coded form — if the level is too high then there’s a change in the colour of the volume bar.

How to check decibel levels on laptops

Third-party apps or extensions are your best bet to check decibel levels on the laptop. Both Google Chrome and Microsoft have extensions which can help you check decibel levels on the laptop. On Google Chrome, here’s how you can do it

• Go to chrome.google.com/webstore
• Click on the Extensions tab
• Search for decibel level or sound meter and download the extension