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Full disclosure: I pulled this information out of my arse, but perhaps it's to avoid the situation where you leave them connected without realising? If it plays at max volume through the headphones you have a better chance of hearing it even if you're not actually wearing the headphones

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If that's the purpose, a better version would start out quiet and get louder over time to give people a chance to remove the earbuds.

The iPhone even does this with the "find my iPhone" alert, it starts out vibrating and then makes noise and gets louder and louder until you find it.

Something similar could easily be done.

I wonder if the "limit max volume" setting elsewhere does anything at all. I suppose it's hard to test.

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