Over the last couple of days I’ve had a number of people ask me about an Amber alert that went out to their phones you other night. Many people felt that this alert was either annoying or not something they were interested in seeing.

Amber alerts are very important and have their place in being able to let people know of a child abduction.  Unfortunately the way they’ve been implemented through the phone service makes the sound default to something very jarring,  particularly if it comes in the middle of the night. As a result people have asked how do I turn these off.

On the iPhone it’s very hard off Amber alerts. Go to settings, Notification center, and scroll all the way to the bottom. There you’ll see two entries that you can turn off and on.  The first controls Amber Alerts. The second Controls other emergency alerts such as weather and national defense alerts. Both of these can be turned off quite easily.

Unfortunately on the iPhone there is no way to change the alert tone. While many people would still like to receive these alerts they do not appreciate the jarring allow tone that is been selected for when these are sent. Perhaps Apple will adjust that in the future.

Doing the same thing in Android can be tricky, because each device is different. If you can’t find the emergency alert option in your phone’s settings, open the Messaging application and look for the option in the messaging settings.