Apple introduces 'decibel monitoring' on watchOS to tell you when it's too damn loud

Apple wants you to channel your inner crank and turn down that racket.

At Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) on Monday, it introduced a host of new features that come standard on watchOS 6. One that garnered somewhat self-conscious loud claps was 'Decibel Monitoring': an app that will notify the watch wearer when their environment is too dang noisy.

The idea is that hearing is an important aspect of one's health, and that being in a loud environment can damage your hearing. As humans, we can certainly tell when we're somewhere loud. But we don't intuitively know what level of "loud" crosses a threshold into potentially damaging. The watch will deliver a notification, telling you to get the heck outta there if you're in a place that's liable to blow (or, ok, just bother) your eardrums.

Apple took pains to emphasize that the watch would not actually collect sonic data. Instead, it would take periodic snippets, that it would assess, but not store somewhere in the watch or the cloud.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Of course, being in a loud place is usually just a circumstance of life; one Mashable colleague pointed out that Apple Watch decibel monitoring is likely to go crazy with pings in loud places where a lot of people wear Apple Watches, such as the Bay Area's BART public transportation system.

However, sound is often one of the senses we pay the least attention to. Our environments are filled with screeching and clanging, which — even if it's not hazardous — is certainly not pleasant. Perhaps the decibel monitoring feature will prompt us to curate our sonic environments with more care.

The way decibel monitoring might work practically is that it might prompt someone to move to a less noisy area of a concert or restaurant. Perhaps decibel monitoring will tell a tuned in concertgoer when it's time to put in those earplugs. In any case, it's making our ear health a part of our larger health, something that Apple is trying to help us master from head to to toe. Or, in this case, ear.