The Human Interface Guides published by Apple describes how ideal application behavior is for the Ring / Silent Switch. Therefore, you may not need to turn off the sound if the user explicitly played this sound clip, despite the quiet mode.
Ring / Silent Switch - What Users Expect
Users use the Ring / Silent switch to disable their devices if they want to:
- Avoid interrupting unexpected sounds such as phone ringtones and an incoming message.
- Avoid hearing sounds that are by-products of user actions, such as keyboards or other feedback sounds, random sounds or app launch sounds.
- Avoid hearing game sounds, including random sounds and soundtracks that are not essential to use the game.
For example, in a theater, users switch their devices to silence so as not to disturb other people in the theater. In this situation, users still want to use applications on their devices, but they do not want to be surprised at sounds that they do not expect or do not explicitly request, for example, ringtones or new message sounds.
However, the Ring / Silent switch does not sound , which is the result of user actions that are solely and explicitly designed to create sound. For instance:
- Playing media only in a media application does not turn off Ring / Silent, because the playback media has been explicitly requested by the user.
- The sync signal is not disabled by Ring / Silent because the alarm was explicitly set by the user.
- The sound clip in the language learning application does not turn off Ring / Silent, because the user has taken explicit measures to hear this.
- Talking in an audio chat application does not turn off Ring / Silent because the user started such an application for the sole purpose of having audio chat.
This behavior follows the principle of user control, since it is up to the user, not the device, to decide whether to hear sounds that the user explicitly requests.