Q: Screen stays dark when alarm goes off in the morning

I did a complete reinstall (for another reason) and also had my new iPhone 6s replaced (also for another reason) but it did not help this problem.  This is just a bug that needs to be fixed.  There is also some randomness to it.  Occasionally it works as it should, but mostly not.

For what it's worth, the only Do Not Disturb feature I've ever used is Repeated Calls. And I almost always have my phone silenced by the toggle switch on the side (so I'm not sure if using Repeated Calls is much help if I'm not even noticing my phone vibrating when I get a call).

I've upgraded my iPhone every year and I've used my alarm clock to wake up for many years now. I don't know if this issue started with iOS9 or with the 6S Plus since they both were launched days apart, but this is definitely a new issue.

Also, some days, my screen lights up, no problem. So the issue of the screen remaining dark is slightly elusive.

I'm definitely adjusting to using my side on/off button more these days, so that I don't accidentally lose my notifications when I press the home button. Even if the screen lights up, I now press the side button to snooze. Maybe this is Apple training us to not always use the home button.

Hi Scott,

I thought it was a great idea as well especially when it worked, however my so called solution has not been able to be replicated. Back to the drawing board I feel. I hope we are voting this up in the  BugCheck. It's a bit of an oversight.

It's unlikely that they don't know about this, but I'm a registered developer so I reported in via https://bugreport.apple.com

It seems from what everyone is writing that it must be a software problem.  (Or at least fixable via software). 

Thanks to everyone on the thread.  Here's hoping.

Hi RVCSanFran,

When you did the complete reinstall, did you do a restore from backup?

How about the new phone?  Restore from backup?

Thanks,

Scott

Thanks Scott!

Thanks for reporting it to Apple!

I upgraded to iOS 9 on my iPhone 6, and had the issue immediately. A couple weeks later I upgraded to the 6s, and restored from iCloud backup. It might be worth mentioning that my 6 was an iCloud restore from my 5s a year earlier, but probably not. Problem started with the upgrade to iOS 9.0. Upgrading to 9.0.2 changed nothing. Having the 6s changed nothing. Upgrading to 9.1 made it work more often, but not always. 9.1 also brought with it the random "touchID doesn't work while alarm is going off".

I paid a little more attention this morning, and I noticed that when the alarm went off, the screen came on just fine, but turned off just 2-3 seconds after, as if I had pressed a button without unlocking. iOS 8 never did this. The screen would stay on the entire time the alarm was going off.

My wife just noticed something that might be related.

When her iPad Air 2 is plugged in overnight and she opens the cover, the light doesn't come on. It used to and it still does does on my iPad 4, and my iPad Pro (although it wasn't plugged in... I'll test it again tomorrow).

Once she she has awakened it with the home button, the magnetic cover turns the light on and off normally.

in other news, on the iPhone, her alarm lit the screen this morning, so it's intermittent.

... and just after writing this, the alarm went off again after having pressed snooze and the screen did not light.

While this problem is annoying, at least there is a workaround. I don't think I want to go to the effort of a complete restore as they suggested to me at the Apple store.

It's a new world full of resets and restores and updates. Not looking forward to my autonomous car crashing!

SO I am experiencing same issue with my iPhone 6s Plus. I did a restore then tried reinstalling my iCloud backup and now I have lost my call logs and text messages. Looked around on the forum and found that a lot of people are having same issue With there iCloud backups. Just a heads up if your on a 6s I would do a manual backup with iTunes before a restore. I'm running 9.1

Well as an FYI, my screen lit up this morning. All by itself. Very random.

Hello everyone,

After several days of analysis, it seems to have found the solution to the morning not the display lights when the alarm sounds.

I sense that if the phone is locked after the date of the start of the "Do not disturb" automatically programmed the phone with the first day alarm lights correctly.

I have two days watching this casuistry and it seems that I have given to the problem of many, observe and comment.

A greeting

MY GOD I'm SO GLAD that this thread is here.

When this issue (exactly as other have described it so I won't bother repeating it) started happening on my iPhone 5 after updating to iOS 9 I searched desperately for a thread on these forums with other people describing it or something similar and at the time there was absolutely nothing.

Now that it's really become an embedded bug in several iterations of iOS 9 I see that it's effecting everybody.

Out of about 14 days worth of daily alarms I'd say that it lights up maybe once or twice.

I'm going to do a bug report to Apple and I strongly suggest everybody else do the same if they haven't. I'm really hoping that they can get this fixed because it's literally the only thing that has been problematic for me with iOS 9 and the two consecutive updates that followed it.

Subscribing to this thread for ongoing updates.

Sadly, bug reports can only be submitted by developers.

FrankieViturello wrote:

 

I'm going to do a bug report to Apple and I strongly suggest everybody else do the same if they haven't.