iPhone alarm sound not playing on iOS 26

Third update for me on this thread; I raised the volume bar one notch, and now the alarm plays. So essentially the update lowered the volume bars a notch. All the way down volume used to still give me a low-volume song being played on alarms, but now it makes it all the way silent. Up two notches now gives me the same volume that I used to get with it turned all the way down. Doesn’t make much sense to me as to why anyone would want “silent” as an option, unless you’re hoping that the light from your phone screen wakes you up or something but that seems ridiculous.

Another issue I noticed is that if you have headphones, AirPods, or other Bluetooth devices connected, the alarm will play through the headphones instead of the phone's internal speaker. This is an issue because sometimes I fall asleep with an AirPod in, but it is not in my ear in the morning. On iOS 18, that was not an issue because the phone would play the alarm; however, today it was playing through the earbuds, and I was late getting up.

I found this thread because I am having the same issue. I use earbuds plugged into the iPhone 15’s USB-C port to listen to a podcast at night. During sleep, the earbuds come out, of course (which is why I use wired ones). On iOS 18 and earlier, my alarm would sound through the iPhone even though the earbuds were still plugged in. After upgrading to iOS 26, the alarm sound stopped going through the iPhone speakers. Luckily, I sleep with the iPhone on the bed, so the vibration wakes me up. Note: I use the “Pick a song” option instead of the default Apple ringtones.

Here is what I discovered. If I use the default Apple alarm/ringtones, they play on both the iPhone and the Earbuds. If I decide to use a song from my own library, the sound does not come through the iPhone speakers as it used to; it only comes through the earbuds, which by morning are somewhere else other than in my ears, but still plugged into the iPhone. I am going to report this as a bug to Apple. I hope if enough of us do that they will fix it back to what it was pre-2026.

I had the same on my iPhone 13 Pro Max.

It was fixed after turning off Attention-Aware Features. You can find it in Settings —> Face ID & Passcode —> Attention-Aware Features.

Hope it works for you too.

Update: I turned it back on and the sound sill works.

I’ve had this issue too. I used to snooze my alarm by clicking the on/off switch when I was too tired to look at the screen. But I worked out this morning that clicking the on/off switch now mutes the alarm. Bit annoying that I have to unlearn that muscle memory now

On iOS 26.0.1 iPhone 16 pro max but affects all iPhones, there is a bug related to Face ID and the setting “Attention Aware Features” and the volume of alarms. If enabled while looking at the phone the volume of alarms in the clock are low, half volume or less.

Turning off “Attention Aware Features” fixes the issue.

It just happened to me yesterday. Noticed the volume was at its lowest. I didn’t have any alarms set for Sunday but I tried turning the volume up and it kept going to the lowest setting. I hard reset and it went back to normal until this morning. Both my alarms volume was low to no noise and I was late for work. I tried hard resting again. But I can’t afford to be late to work. Apple fix this ASAP. TO ADD TO THIS MY AWARENESS IS OFF AS WELL AS FOCUS. So this is a major issue that NEEDS TO BE FIXED. it’s costing millions of people to miss work and wages.

On iOS 26.0.1 iPhone 16 pro max but affects all iPhones, there is a bug related to Face ID and the setting “Attention Aware Features” and the volume of alarms. If enabled while looking at the phone the volume of alarms in the clock are low, half volume or less.

Turning off “Attention Aware Features” fixes the issue.

I regularly no longer get any indication my wake alarm is going off other than the screen turning on which obviously isn’t particularly useful. No vibrating on my watch, no sound, nothing. It has happened to my partner as well where one morning neither of our alarms went off. This is an egregious bug and apparently is pretty common. I don’t want to try every conceivable combination of alarm settings to try and fix it (already tried the attention setting and checking the alarm volume). This gotta be fixed and fast. We bought a physical alarm clock bc we apparently can’t rely on our phones performing this very basic function.

I’m thinking the alarm changes in 26.2 might fix this but NOW would be better. The damage this bug can cause in various situations is so high and millions of people have until now been able to rely on using an iPhone as an alarm so why wouldn’t they continue to?

Exactly @cgilson33! I have the same issue and the scary thing is this looks like a new way it has been designed.

Now with one click to the side button that would snooze the alarm before, it now completely silences the alarm and NEVER gives you another alarm after a snooze period because it is prompting you on the screen to see if you want to snooze it or stop the alarm. This is diabolical and is probably making thousands of people late for work, school, meetings, everything. We have collectively learned that one side button push snoozes the alarm, it doesn't stop the alarm never to return. Fix this Apple!

This has been happening to me too. I was late for work because it turned the alarm off…

also, what’s up with the volume? Before it would work with the ringer level and now it’s completely doing its own thing, it’s either too low now or blaring. I got such a fright this morning.

I thought I was going crazy that I keep missing my alarm every morning. I’ve been late this entire week and I am so annoyed that they removed this feature. I also press the side buttons and this makes the phone alarm for me useless now. Gonna get an oldschool clock to fix this. Thanks for nothing apple

I’m having the same issue, I’m a heavy sleeper and had been having problems with my alarm until I discovered the attention feature, everything has been fine until the ios 26 update. Now my alarm is either silent or really quiet and no amount of messing with the buttons and volume settings is fixing it. My partner has also got this problem and is taking to pulling all nighters when he has to get up for work due to the anxiety of sleeping in.

Didn’t update to the latest version yet, but turned off Attention Aware features in face id and password settings and it seems to work now. I still always check if I have silent mode off but it seems fixed now.

This is my problem exactly! I sleep with a Bluetooth sleep mask/headphones (at a very low volume) and my alarm USED to sound on my phone at full volume regardless of what I was playing. NOW it will only play on my headphones at the super low volume and it’s not enough to wake me up! This is a HUGE shift in how the alarm functions and needs to be restored to the original functionality please! I can’t imagine this isn’t impacting more people!