Smartphones are great. They allow you to connect to your friends, your community, and the world with just a touch. On the other hand, that connection runs both ways. In the U.S., smartphone users are subject to around three spam phone calls and over 40 notifications every day. Although those numbers aren’t burdensome, you always have the option to turn off notifications for particular apps or silence your phone when you’re in a cinema spending the money you saved buying one of the best budget phones of 2023.
Some notifications can’t be easily silenced, such as Amber Alerts. When a child is abducted, law enforcement officials notify FEMA via its Integrated Public Alert & Warning System. FEMA then issues an alert through the Wireless Emergency Alert system, a smartphone-based emergency notification system that nearly all carriers in the U.S. opted into. From a technical perspective, WEA messages are SMS text messages. However, the message is to all phones within a specific geographic area instead of being between two phones. Besides being loud and annoying (sorry, you can’t change the sound), the alert plays even if your phone is on do not disturb. So how can you turn it off?
Disable Amber Alerts on a stock Android device
Not too long ago, different carriers and OEMs buried the toggle for Amber Alerts in different places. Today, the process is largely the same across all stock Android devices.
- Open the Settings menu on your phone.
- Scroll down and select Safety & emergency.
- Scroll down again and tap Wireless emergency alerts.
- Find the AMBER Alerts toggle and switch it off.
This is the process for disabling Amber Alerts on most Android phones (these screenshots show Android 13 running on a Google Pixel 4a).
The process on some older phones may be different. On a Moto G6 running Android 9, the emergency alert settings are in the Advanced Settings of the Apps & Notifications menu. Older Samsung phones had the Amber Alert toggle buried in the messaging app. However, for the past few years, all its phones have followed the above steps to silence WEA alerts.
How to disable Amber Alerts on a Motorola phone
Even though Google briefly owned Motorola, it’s not running stock Android and thus has a slightly different method of accessing the WEA alerts.
- Open the Settings menu.
- Touch Apps & notifications.
- Select Advanced.
- Tap Wireless emergency alerts.
- Find the AMBER Alerts toggle and switch it off.
How to disable Amber Alerts on an iPhone
Turning off Amber Alerts on your Apple iPhone is a breeze. And since the iOS experience is homogenized across carriers, the process is the same on all modern iPhones. If you have an Apple Watch, this also turns off notifications for it.
- Open the Settings app on your phone.
- Select Notifications from the Settings menu.
- Scroll to the bottom of the Notifications menu until you get to Government Alerts.
- Find the AMBER Alerts toggle and switch it off.
What about those other emergency alerts?
You probably noticed a bit more than Amber Alerts going on in your phone’s Wireless Emergency Alert/Government Alerts section. On Android, extreme threats and severe threats are analogous to the emergency alerts on iPhone. They’re usually weather-related and issued by the National Weather Service for extreme weather events.
Source: National Weather Service
Public safety alerts typically aren’t as urgent as weather alerts, but they can be just as important. Following the Boston Marathon bombing, a shelter-in-place warning was issued to the greater Boston area. Western states often use the WEA system to notify residents they may need to evacuate ahead of a wildfire.
What are Amber Alerts?
Amber Alerts (short for America’s Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response) are communications sent out by law enforcement agencies when a child under the age of 18 is believed to have been abducted, is considered to be in imminent danger, and there is sufficient information that can be shared with the public.
The system began in Dallas in 1996 when police teamed up with local broadcasters to share information with the public in the wake of child abductions. In 2012, the WEA system went live, and Amber Alerts began showing up on phones.
You should probably leave emergency alerts enabled
Despite the intrusive annoyance of unwanted notifications, the Amber Alert system is successful at recovering missing children. In 2021, of the 254 children recovered after an Amber Alert was issued for them, around 20% were recovered as a direct result of the Amber Alert being issued. Because of the good they can do, you should probably set your phone to allow alerts when you’re done with your presentation or movie.
It’s also worth mentioning that there is one notification that can never be silenced. Believe it or not, the President and the Administrator of FEMA can send an emergency message to every mobile phone in the U.S. (some of you may remember the first time the Presidential Alert was used in 2018 to send a test alert). If you have issues with your notifications unrelated to emergency alerts, check our guide on how to fix common problems with notifications.
