Do you sometimes miss the doorbell or a knock on the door because you’re wearing headphones? Not everyone knows this, but there’s a built-in sound recognition feature in the iPhone’s settings. By default, this feature, found in the Accessibility section of System Settings, notifies you whenever a certain sound is heard, but you can take it even further by enabling a shortcut.

Note that Apple's documentation clearly states that you shouldn't use this feature "to identify sounds in situations where you could be injured or harmed, in hazardous or emergency situations, or for navigation." However, when the stakes are lower, this can help you avoid missing something.

From here, you can toggle which sounds you want the phone to passively listen for. The default list includes alarms, pets, and various household noises like a boiling kettle or a knock on the door. You can turn on sounds and receive a notification each time your iPhone “detects” the sound. You can also train your phone to recognize your specific devices and alarms. The process, which is guided, involves triggering the alarm multiple times so your phone can learn to recognize it.

As I mentioned earlier, you can also use this feature to activate Apple Shortcuts. The only limitation here is the shortcut you can build. For example, you can keep track of how many times you boil a kettle of water each day, or how many times the neighbor’s dog barks. Or, like I did, you can set your phone to talk to you when something completely normal happens because you find it funny.