All smartphones, including those of the Android persuasion, alert both you and the world when you are shooting a photo via a distinctive shutter click. It’s analogous to the click on a physical camera. Normally, this sound is not a problem, but sometimes you may prefer that your shooting be silent when you are in a meeting or capturing wildlife. We walk you through the various ways of shutting down that shutter sound.
Turn down the master volume
Android phones have master volume buttons on the side of the handset that control all volume on the phone, including phone rings, music, and even the shutter click. To quickly disable shutter click sounds, use these master buttons. To do this, tap the volume down button while watching the screen volume slider descend and then disappear. Once the volume is all the way down, the phone will switch to a vibrate mode, and then most models will completely silence your phone. Either vibrate or full silence should mute the shutter noise. This option should work with almost every Android phone or tablet, including brands like Samsung, LG, and Google Pixel, but you still have to remember to restore volume again when you are done taking pictures if you want to hear your phone ring. Android 10 gives you a heads up display, allowing you even more granular control over sound levels of various features.
Turn off the camera shutter sound
If you want to permanently shut down all shutter sounds forever, but still want to hear all the other sounds on your phone, there is a more direct way to do that in camera settings.
- In your phone’s main menu and tap the Camera icon, as you would to take a picture.
- Locate the camera settings — usually a gear icon somewhere at the top of the window.
- Find an option that says Shutter sound, Camera sounds, or something similar. Note that the interface may look a little different, depending on the phone and OS version you have, but this is another setting the majority of Android phones have. This example uses an LG V40 ThinQ running Android 10.
- Toggle the Shutter sound option to off to permanently disable any shutter click sounds until you decide to toggle it on again.
Turn off shutter sound temporarily (Samsung)
This method works generally works well with Samsung phones but not all options may not be present on all Android models or all versions of the operating system.
- On your phone’s main menu, swipe down from the top to reveal the settings and notifications menu and look for the volume icon, a megaphone design (it will have a slash through it if sounds are currently disabled).
- Press and hold the volume icon until it opens a menu for Sounds and Vibration. This is a master volume shortcut window that allows you to switch between sound and vibrate. However, it’s the Mute option we’re looking for,
- In certain versions of Android, you can tap Mute to find the Temporary Mute option. In newer versions, it’s directly below it. You can use this option to temporarily mute your phone for a certain period of time. Select the time frame that works best for you, and all sound will be muted for that duration. Many people like to use this option for meetings and events, but it’s also a great choice if you’re going to be doing a lot of photography with your phone and don’t want to hear the shutter sound.
If you have an older Samsung phone running an earlier version of Android (say, Android 6.0 Marshmallow), you may not get the temporary option, but rather follow the same steps as above with an interface that just gives you the Mute option.
Country restrictions
In some countries like Japan and South Korea, you will not be able to mute the camera shutter sound no matter what you do. Shutter muting is disabled, as phones sold for those markets ensure privacy to discourage secret filming. It’s not a law, but manufacturers and Japanese wireless carriers cooperate so that phones make a distinctive sound whenever you use the camera. Possible workarounds include muffling the sound by covering the speaker while you shoot, using the headphone jack and shooting photos using your headphone as a shutter, and using third-party camera apps instead of the default Camera app. It’s worth a try.
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