Apple's iOS 17 has a new notification alert sound and people aren't happy about it

Apple's iOS 17 update was announced during the WWDC event on June 5 and it's been in beta testing ever since that time. But despite various betas throughout the last couple of months, Apple made a change in the final version and it's causing a few people some problems.

That change might not seem like a huge one for some people, but for others, it seems to be causing some big problems. The change? Apple has done away with the familiar Tri-tone message alert sound, replacing it with a new Rebound one. And it appears that the new tone just isn't going to pass muster for some people. Perhaps this is why Apple should have made the change earlier in the beta cycle so that it could get some feedback - the kind of thing betas are actually for, of course.

The new tone change was made in the iOS 17 Release Candidate update that was made available a week before the update was rolled out to everyone who wanted it. Now that iOS 17 is available to the public there are more people than ever falling foul of the new tone, and boy are they complaining about it. Some say that the new tone simply isn't loud enough for them to hear it, while others lament the change in vibration pattern that the new tone has - making it harder to feel when in a pocket, for example.

The real issue here is that people can't change the tone, preventing them from going back to the familiar Tri-tone option.

The new alert tone is the default iOS 17 one, too. That means that any app that doesn't provide its own custom tone will automatically use this new one, including popular apps like social networks X and Facebook. Users of those apps now hear the new Rebound tone, whether they want it, or not.

This new tone will of course also be the one that people hear when they pick up their new iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Pro handsets later this week. The new models officially go on sale on September 22 and we can likely expect the number of complaints to increase once people get their new iPhones.

It remains to be seen if this sis something that Apple will address in a future iOS 17.1 update or if people will simply get used to it. And it wouldn't be a big new iOS update without a needless and completely avoidable controversy now, would it?