iOS 6 Made My E-mail Stop Dinging: Here’s How I Fixed It

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The night was quiet, my friends. A little too quiet. I had slunk into my oversized chair – bigger than a chair but smaller than a loveseat – to catch up on whatever whimsical programs had recorded on my TiVo. It had already been a long week. It was only Tuesday.

Harry had alerted me earlier in the day that his review of the new Slingboxes would be going live right at 9pm. “Great,” I said. I’ll edit any article at any time. I’m not afeared of the after-hours.

My mind wandered. Yukon Men had sucked me right in. Godspeed, Tanana. You are a hearty people. And now it’s time for bed.

I awoke the next morning to find an e-mail from Harry, sent while I had been watching the Yukon Men search for a bear that was terrorizing the village (it was in Stan’s backyard!!!):

“Not sure if you’re still at the grindstone, but I’m proofreading it for the 9pm embargo. If I don’t hear from you, I’ll push it live then, but can you take a look when you have a chance?”

No ding! I always set my phone to ding after the official workday ends, just in case there’s more work to be done. I’m not afeared of the after-hours. I had let Harry down. I pictured him, frantic in San Francisco: “How do I call 911 in Boston?!!! Doug is not afeared of the after-hours!!! Something has gone awry! His response to the ding is normally measured in nanoseconds!”

I had let Harry down. And iOS 6, which I had installed on my work-issued iPhone 4 (I know! It’s like, requisition a new phone already, right?!) a few weeks prior had let me down. Scores of other e-mails had gone unnoticed in the after-hours. I was blissfully unaware. In my heart of hearts, I knew the ding wasn’t dinging from the start. But I enjoyed the silence. Most messages were delete-able or didn’t require immediate action in the first place — but the one from Harry that slipped through the cracks was a real doozy.

So my phone was set to ding but the ding never dinged. Sure, the ring would ring when it was meant to ring. It even bu-du-duped when there were push notifications. But no ding. I researched. Sound problems were happening to the others. Some problems were similar to mine; some were different. Some fixes worked for some; some fixes didn’t.

Here’s what worked for me:

Settings > General > Reset > Reset All Settings

There was no app apocalypse. All my content remained unchanged. But boy did my settings get reset. Vibrating while set to silent? Silent means silent! The marimba ringtone? Might as well wear a shirt that says, “Hi, I don’t work in tech.” The homescreen picture of my dog looking like he was posing for an elementary school portrait? Gone!

But the ding. The ding was back, baby. I had reset all my settings.

Now to try to reset the settings of my friendship with Harry. It may be a long, cold winter but if the people of Tanana, Alaska can survive it, then perhaps Harry and I have a shot as well.

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