iPhone volume randomly lowers

BlightStrider wrote:

I’ve seen a similar question here but no solution. I have an iPhone 12 mini currently running 27.0.1. The volume will randomly lower on its on. For example when scrolling through Instagram. The volume bar does not appear when this happens and it will still show the previous volume level. For example the volume bar will show 100% volume but the actual volume is very low.

It also occurs when calling someone on speaker and switching to safari or iCal to check something.

In both scenarios it’s almost as if it’s switching off the phone call speaker.

I keep Bluetooth turned off and I already turned off attention awareness, loudness protection, and other settings suggested elsewhere. I believe the issue began in a previous iOS version.

Bluetooth would have nothing to do with the issues you're described. You do own an iPhone which was released in 2020, six years ago. Have you had the battery replaced in your iPhone since you bought it? If no, after this much time, it would make sense that the battery is failing and when batteries fail, things don't work optimally.

Open Settings > Battery > Battery Health - if there is a notification that Battery Service is required and the health is shown as 80% or lower, the battery is failing in your phone and it's likely past the time to have the battery replaced by Apple.

Check the following:

1)Disable Attention Aware Features: Go to Settings > Face ID & Passcode, turn off Attention Aware Features, and check if this prevents the volume from lowering automatically when looking away or multitasking.  

 2)Check Headphone Safety and Loudness Limits: Navigate to Settings > Sounds & Haptics > Headphone Safety to ensure that Reduce Loudness or volume caps are disabled if audio levels drop unexpectedly.  

 3)Disable Bluetooth: Go to Settings > Bluetooth and turn it completely off to rule out intermittent audio routing glitches connecting to hidden or nearby wireless devices.