How to Create Custom Vibrations for Individual Contacts in iOS 7

Recently, we told you how you could set up custom vibration alerts in iOS 7. This can be useful for people that keep their iPhone on silent – you can tell exactly what sort of notification your iPhone is trying to give you without having to even so much as remove it from your pocket! Today, we take it to the next level.

In addition to setting up custom vibrations for various types of system alerts, you can also set up specific vibration patterns for each individual contact, for both texting and phone calls. That way, you’ll know who’s calling without having to look at or touch your phone – so if your poker buddies are just bugging you at work, you can ignore them and respond later. But if it’s your boss, you know you need to answer right away.

Setting up contact-specific vibration alerts is very, very simple. Just open up the iOS Contacts app, select a contact, and tap the Edit button in the top right corner of your screen. Next, scroll down to the Ringtone and Text Tone settings. You’ll see a field called Vibration underneath each.

Choosing the Vibration option will allow you to select between many vibration alerts already included in iOS 7. You can also create your own by scrolling to the bottom of the list, and choosing “Create New Vibration,” tapping out a pattern of your choice, and giving that pattern its own unique name.

That’s all there is to it! This is one of the most useful hidden tricks I have discovered in iOS, and one I use frequently. I hope you get as much out of it as I have been able to! For more helpful tips, check out our full collection of tutorials by visiting our How-To category!

J. Glenn Künzler

Glenn is Managing Editor at MacTrast, and has been using a Mac since he bought his first MacBook Pro in 2006. He lives in a small town in Utah, enjoys bacon more than you can possibly imagine, and is severely addicted to pie.