Dynamically Position the iPad’s Volume Buttons

0:01
In this video, we’re going to look at how we can dynamically position the iPads volume buttons. Basically, what we’re able to do is set which button is the volume up and volume down based on the orientation of the iPad. This was introduced with iPad os 15.4. Let’s see how we do this and why we would want to do this on our iPads. Let’s go to my iPad. So I’m looking at my iPad here, I have an overview camera. So I can easily rotate it and demonstrate what we are doing or what the behavior of the iPad volume buttons are. So I have my volume buttons up here. Now by default, when I turn the volume up, what I need to do is I need to press the left volume button.

0:44
When I do that, let’s go ahead and do that, you’re gonna see that the volume turns up. And then when I press the right button, the volume turns down, that’s actually backwards, have really what we want, we really want to have the volume turned up when we press the right button. Let’s go and rotate the iPad. I’m going to pick it up here. And I’m going to rotate it. And now my volume buttons are down at the bottom here. When I press the top button here, watch what happens. The volume turns down. And then when I press the bottom button, the volume turns up again, backwards of really what we want.

1:25
But we don’t want to just simply reverse them. Because if I have my iPad rotated around the other way. Now when I press the top button, it’s actually going to behave correctly, the volume is turning up. And then when I press the bottom button, the volume is turning down. So it’s working properly when it’s rotated this way, but if I rotated 180 degrees, it’s backwards. So really, what we need to do is we need to dynamically set how these volume buttons are using the volume up and volume down buttons based on the orientation. Well, we can now do that with iPad os 15.4. The way that we do that as we go into our settings app here. And then what we need to do is we need to go to sounds under sounds, you’re going to see fixed position volume controls, I’m not sure if you can see that on the camera, I’m going to bring it in here a little bit. And you’re going to see fixed position volume controls.

2:29
When that is turned down. That means that those volume controls are fixed. That’s the default behavior. That’s how we’ve been using it. If you want to have it dynamically set, which is what I recommend, what you want to do is turn this off, so it is no longer fixed. Now the volume buttons will change, depending on the orientation of the iPad. So I’m going to swipe up to go back to our home screen. Now when I press the stop button here, it’s still going to turn the volume up. And then when I press the bottom button, it turns the volume down just like we did before. But watch what happens when I rotate this 180 degrees. Remember, when it was set this way, when I press the bottom button, or actually the top button now it turned the volume down.

3:17
Now when I press this, we can see this turning the volume up, and the bottom button turns the volume down. So I dynamically switched how those volume buttons work. And when I go to the right here, or just 90 degrees to the right. Remember how when I press this right button here, it turned the volume down. And then when I press the lock button to turn the volume up, well now watch what happens. I’m pressing the left button, it’s turning the volume down, it’s turning the volume up. And then when I rotate it 90 degrees again, it’s going to switch how those buttons are set, I press the Volume Up button. To turn the volume up, I press the volume down button or the bottom button, it’s turning the volume down. So we can now dynamically set how the volume buttons work based on the orientation of the iPad. This was introduced with iPad os 15.4. So you do need to update to at least iPad os 15.4. To set this up, you just go over to the settings and you go over to sounds and then at the very bottom you’re gonna see fixed position volume controls, just make sure that is turned off and when that is turned off, the iPad will dynamically set what the volume buttons do based on the orientation of the iPad. So that’s how we can dynamically set what the volume buttons do based on the orientation of the iPad.