Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Following the release of Apple’s iOS 15 update, some users have reported strange behavior on Instagram — when an iPhone’s ringer switch is set to silent mode, stories play without audio. Currently, you can even silence a video while it’s still playing by flipping the switch, even though the switch shouldn’t mute the rest of an iPhone’s sounds.
Silent videos might sound like a blessing for friends who love to put every new song Spotify suggests to them in their Instagram Story, but that’s not exactly how the switch is supposed to work. Silent mode is primarily meant to control system sounds like ringtones and text tones, not the audio you hear inside apps.
I was able to recreate the behavior on my own iPhone…
