Everything in this park is built so that sound and vibration are a bonus rather than a requirement — all twelve toys play through to the end without either. Even so, it is distracting when something you expected does not happen. There are essentially three causes. Check them from the top.
One: iPhones and iPads do not vibrate, because the browser has no such feature
For a web page to make a device buzz, the browser needs a feature called the Vibration API. MDN's browser compatibility data records the support for navigator.vibrate as not supported in Safari and not supported in Safari on iOS. Chrome, by contrast, has supported it since version 32, and the Android entry carries the note "Beginning in Chrome 60, this method requires a user gesture. Otherwise it returns false."
So an iPhone or iPad that does not vibrate is not a settings problem. There is nothing to switch on that will change it. This site checks mechanically whether the device supports it, does not attempt to vibrate where it does not, and instead puts a one-line note on screen so that it does not fail in silence.
Firefox did support it from version 16, but it was removed in 129 — the same MDN compatibility data records the removal.
How to confirm it: open the same page in Chrome or Edge on Android. If it buzzes there, nothing is wrong with your hardware.
Two: no sound (silent switch, volume, autoplay)
For sound there is an order to check things in.
- The silent switch or ring mode on the device. On an iPhone it is the switch on the side; on Android it is in the sound settings. On most devices, browser sound obeys it.
- The volume itself. On many devices the ringer volume and the media volume are managed separately. Browser sound is media.
- Whether you have touched the screen yet. This is the third one, and the one most often misread.
Browsers do not allow a page to make a sound before the visitor has interacted with it. Chrome's developer documentation states that "Autoplay with sound is allowed if: The user has interacted with the domain (click, tap, etc.)", and adds, for Web Audio, that "If an AudioContext is created before the document receives a user gesture, it will be created in the 'suspended' state, and you will need to call resume() after the user gesture."
This site is built around that rule: it is silent until you touch something. Rather than putting a Start button in the way, it uses your first real action to get the audio ready. Silence immediately after the page loads is therefore the correct behavior, and sound arrives from the first touch onward.
Three: sound or vibration is switched off here
At the top right of every page there are two buttons: ♪ for sound and ≋ for vibration. Each press toggles it, and the state is stored in this browser. Having turned one off at some point and forgotten is easily the most common cause. The buttons are on every page.
Can I play with neither sound nor vibration?
Yes. All twelve toys are built with "satisfying to look at" as the first condition. Sound and vibration add to that; they are never load-bearing. In Japan a large share of phones are iPhones, where vibration simply does not arrive, and a great many people open a page like this on a train with the sound off. A design that assumed either one would not survive contact with those two facts.
In practice, every one of the twelve is checked mechanically for the same thing: that the peak of the toy can be reached with the sound muted and vibration switched off.
If movement is difficult for you
If your device is set to reduce motion or reduce transparency, this site replaces its livelier animation with a quieter version. That happens automatically from the device setting; there is nothing to choose on the site.
Related pages
- koron — shake a stick out of the cylinder: the only toy that uses device movement. Where that is unavailable, three taps count as one shake, and permission is requested only when you press Shake.
- munyu — press and knead: the clearest place to see the difference the reduced-motion setting makes.
- See all twelve toys