How to Create Custom Vibration Patterns for iPhone Contacts

Vibrations are a great way to alert you when someone is calling or texting without notifying everyone else around you. The only problem: you may not know who is contacting you unless you pull your iPhone out of your pocket.

We’ve shown you how to assign different vibration patterns and ringtones to your iPhone contacts. We’ve even shown you how to add your very own custom-made ringtones to your iPhone so you can trick it out just the way you want it. But what if iOS’ built-in vibration patterns aren’t enough?

iOS’ custom vibration patterns mean that you instead can tap out your own patterns, instead of using the dozen or so vibration alerts that come prepackaged with your iPhone. So, say you and your friends have a secret knock, you can turn that into a vibration pattern. Or maybe you want to do something cheeky like “Shave and a Haircut.” That too you can convert to a vibration.

Creating your own vibration pattern is really easy, so let’s have a look at how to do it.

In this example, we’re going to create a new vibration pattern to accompany our primary ringtone. You can do this for any system sound event, or assign it to a specific contact and outlined in the aforementioned article.

First open the Settings and tap open “Ringtone”.



Next, tap open “Vibration”.



Under Custom, you want to tap “Create New Vibration”.



Now, tap on the large grey area on your iPhone screen to create your vibration pattern. When you think you’ve got it just right, tap “Stop” and tap “Play” to review it.



If you’re happy with the results, you can go ahead and tap “Save” and give your new vibration an appropriate name.



Now, you will see that it is available in the Vibration screen under the custom section.



You can create as many vibrations as you want, giving them each their own special names and then assigning them to accompany various system events and contacts.

If you decide that you no longer want a particular pattern, then all you have to do is tap “Edit” in the upper-right corner.



Then simply tap on the minus sign next to the vibration pattern or patterns you want to delete.



From there, you can add that vibration pattern to a contact just like you would any other.

Bear in mind, you’re obviously limited in how much you can do, so if you’re an aspiring drummer or percussionist, you probably won’t achieve incredibly dynamic results.

But, if you just need a simple pattern to let you know when mom or a friend is calling (without informing everyone else around you), then this is a great way to do that.