From the earliest iPhones to the latest iPhone 11 Pro Max, each iPhone has had one thing in common — the iconic shutter click that plays whenever you take a photo. It’s a neat little tone of realism for your iPhone camera, and one that’s as recognizable as it is cute. But not every situation calls for a click, and sometimes you want to take photos in absolute silence. Thankfully, you can turn off the iPhone camera sound in most countries. Here’s how to do it, and why you may not be able to turn it off in some countries.

Turn on Live Photos

Here’s a fun little tip — while Live Photos is enabled on your phone, your shutter sound is turned off by default. So tap the Live Photos button on your camera app (it’s the series of circles, second from the left), and while it’s on, you won’t hear your camera taking snaps. It’ll also save small videos for every shot you take, which is awesome, but takes up a lot of space — so don’t forget to turn it off if space is at a premium.

Use the mute switch

The easiest way to mute the camera sound is to use the ring/silent switch on the upper left-hand side. When you flick the switch to mute, you’ll feel the iPhone vibrate and see a notification signaling the switch. Turning off the ringer mutes all notifications, incoming calls and other alerts, so although you may want to use this control judiciously, it’s great to know about if you need to quickly turn all sound off.

Turn down the volume

What can you do if the silent switch isn’t working? If you’re having problems getting your silent switch to cooperate, turning down the volume is the next best thing. Do that by using the volume button on the left-hand side of the phone. Just hold it down until you see the volume go all the way down. But you have to do it at the right time. If you do it while you’re in the camera app, it will start taking pictures in burst mode. Yikes.

The trick is to lower the volume before you launch the Camera app and start shooting. Alternately, while in the Camera app, you can swipe up from the bottom of the screen to access the Control Center, and you can lower the sound from there.

Country restrictions

In some countries, notably Japan and South Korea, the camera shutter sound stays on at all times. Shutter muting is disabled, as phones sold there are customized for those markets to ensure privacy and prevent secret filming. Though it’s not a law, manufacturers and Japanese wireless carriers have cooperated so that phones make a distinctive sound whenever you use the camera. If you’re in these countries, even if you mute the iPhone, your camera app will still make a sound.

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, using third-party camera apps instead of the iPhone’s default Camera app, and using the volume buttons on your iPhone as shutter buttons. For those shooting images legally and not violating anyone’s privacy in those countries, it’s worth a try.

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