Why iPhone keyboard sound doesn’t work in some apps
The ringer switch is not the only thing that can silence keyboard clicks. A recording microphone or a live call does it too, on purpose, and no setting turns it back on.
Ringer on, ringer volume up, keyboard clicks working fine in Messages a minute ago — and then you open one particular app, start typing, and hear nothing. This is a different problem from the sound simply being off, and it has a specific, deliberate cause.
Rule out the ordinary cause first
If keyboard sound is missing everywhere, in every app, the ringer switch or the ringer volume is almost always why — that is a separate, more common problem covered in the guide on turning on keyboard sound and haptics. What this page is about is the narrower case: sound works normally in most apps and only disappears inside one specific screen, even though nothing in Settings has changed.
A keyboard click is a system sound effect, not a regular sound
The click you hear when you type is played through the same short-sound mechanism iOS uses for things like the Mail “sent” sound or the camera shutter — a lightweight system API meant for brief UI feedback, not a full audio track. It is why a keyboard extension can make sound at all without asking for any special permission: it does not open its own audio session, it just fires a short system sound and lets iOS handle it.
Why a recording microphone mutes it
That same lightweight mechanism is exactly what gets muted the moment an app opens the microphone to record — a camera app filming a video, a social app capturing a caption over a Reel or a Story, a voice memo, a video call being recorded. iOS treats system UI sounds as something that should never leak into whatever is currently being captured, so it silences them for the duration of the recording rather than risk a keyboard click showing up on your audio track. The moment recording stops, the click comes back on its own — nothing needs to be reset.
Why a live call does the same thing
A phone call or a FaceTime call holds the microphone open the same way a recording does, for as long as the call is active, and iOS applies the same suppression to system sounds while it is. Type a message during a call and the keyboard is silent; hang up and it is back, with no setting to touch in between.
Telling the two cases apart
- Silent in one app, fine everywhere else, and that app is actively recording or on a call → this page. Nothing is wrong.
- Silent the instant you open an app that immediately turns on its camera or starts a call → same cause, just less obvious because you never saw the sound working in that app to begin with.
- Silent absolutely everywhere, including Notes and Messages → check the ringer switch and the ringer volume instead; that is a settings problem, not this one.
There is nothing to fix here
This is not a bug in a keyboard app, and it is not something a keyboard — third-party or Apple’s own — can override, because the suppression happens at the system level, below where any keyboard extension runs. It is also, on reflection, the behaviour you would actually want: nobody typing a caption over a video wants a mechanical click baked permanently into the recording’s soundtrack.
Where Kibo fits
Kibo’s key sounds use that same lightweight system sound mechanism as Apple’s own click, rather than opening a dedicated audio session, which is why they need no Full Access to play — and also why they follow exactly the behaviour described above, going quiet while you are recording or on a call and returning the moment you are not. Haptic feedback is unaffected either way, since it comes from the Taptic Engine rather than from audio.
Frequently asked questions
Why does my keyboard sound stop working only while I am recording a video?
iOS mutes system UI sounds, which is the category keyboard clicks fall into, for as long as an app has the microphone open for recording. It stops on purpose, so the click cannot end up on the recording’s audio track, and comes back the moment recording ends.
Is this a bug in my keyboard app?
No. The suppression happens at the system level, not inside any keyboard, so it affects every keyboard on the phone equally, including Apple’s own click sound.
Does this affect keyboard haptics too?
No. Haptic feedback comes from the Taptic Engine, not from an audio sound, so it keeps working while keyboard sound is suppressed during a recording or a call.
Try it on your own keyboard
Kibo is a free custom keyboard for iPhone with real mechanical key sounds, a wardrobe of themes and RGB backlight effects. No account, no ads, and it works with Full Access left off.