Arriving an hour late for work because your iPhone’s alarm didn’t go off is one of life’s cruelest tricks, but one that an uncomfortably large number of iPhone owners believe they’ve fallen victim to in recent weeks.
The American news center reports this TodayMany iPhone users have taken to social media to complain about iPhone alarm glitches, with many of these cases resulting in missed appointments. “I noticed this past week that my alarm clock wasn’t waking me up,” says TikTok user @charkaylottewho owns an iPhone 11, while @elizabethannswensoncomplains about the same problem with their iPhone 15 in a separate TikTok video.
Apple has informed us that it is aware of an issue preventing some iPhone alarms from working as expected, and the company is already working on a fix, but we suspect this is at least the case some of the blame can be laid on a little-known iPhone setting that can incorrectly cause alarms to play at a lower volume. Allow us to explain.
@elizabethannswenson
♬ original sound – Elizabeth
Introduced in iOS 17 – which, it’s worth noting, is compatible with the iPhone (presumably because Apple thinks you don’t want to be exposed to the radar tone at full volume while looking down the barrel of your iPhone, which is fair).
Some affected users have reported that disabling the Attention Aware setting resolved their silent alarm issues (perhaps because it caused their iPhones to accidentally detect a face at night). If you want to do this yourself, go to Settings, Face ID & Passcode, then disable the Attention Aware Features tab.
Apple itself has also encouraged affected users to double-check their selected alert tones under Sounds & Haptics in Settings and clarified that iPhones in StandBy mode must be left silent all night to function properly.
Reddit users have noted earlier that reducing the number of alarms that need to go off in quick succession can limit the risk of no-shows, as can converting custom alarm sounds to the default ones (which we don’t think is a bad thing, since the iOS 17 alarm tones are so darn Good).
By the way, activating Do Not Disturb, the Ring/Silent switch, or Silent Mode doesn’t affect the Alarm app, so you don’t have to subject yourself to the constant “ding!” to notifications when you’re trying to get a good night’s sleep.
Ideally, however, Apple will soon release an update that improves the functionality of the ‘Attention Aware’ setting, which appears to be enabled by default.
For more alarm-related content, check out our roundup of the best (and worst) iPhone alarms to wake up to, according to science.