Should you still want to dive in and mess with this deep magic I was able to construct something together form the code I found here: http://www.iphonedevsdk.com/forum/iphone-sdk-development/54013-hardware-volume-change-listener-callback.html You want to register a listen to the AudioProperties and catch any messages about 'kAudioSessionProperty_AudioRouteChange'. Using the 'reason' and the 'name'