Screen stays dark when alarm goes off in the morning

mikerisner - great observation! I didn't even realize that until you mentioned it.

It does seem to be a larger issue than the screen remaining dark during alarms, as others have pointed out. My display also fails to illuminate when I unplug it from charging - which it always used to do. On another couple of occasions, I've unplugged it from charging when it's dark and the screen is very bright (I have my brightness adjusted to dim when the ambient light is lower - this appears to the the "normal" display brightness).

Crazy.

Just a couple of notes. I was wondering if low battery mode could be a culprit, but the other day I went to bed with 44% battery, plugged my phone into the charger and when the alarm went off in the morning, the screen was blank.

Also, the past couple of mornings, I've had trouble getting the alarm to snooze when the screen was lit up. I would tap the snooze link on the phone, it would blink indicating that it felt my touch, but the alarm would not stop. I only get a couple of tries before the screen goes dark (though the alarm is still going off) so I end up having to press the side button to snooze. Grr...

I want my old alarm clock back.

Sometimes the screen stays dark and won't wake. I have to hold home and sleep for several seconds and reboot the phone to make it stop. Sometimes it does light up but doesn't respond so I have to reboot.

Clock must be the buggiest app. Remember the New Years bugs from a couple years ago?

HI,

contrary what I told in my previous post, there is no relation with the percentage of charge but only with the time the iPhone stay plugged.

Here are my tests :

26/10 - 77% - 21:00..06:25 pb (09:25 plugged)

27/10 - 68% - 23:30..06:25 ok (06:55 plugged)

04/11 - 30% - 23:55..08:25 pb (08:30 plugged)

This problem occurred not only with alrm clock but with all notification that should turn on the screen.

best regards

Hello,

It is morning if the phone worked properly, has been on the screen to sound the first alarm of the day. Unlike previous days, I have not slept and was charged with taking a 40% battery.

I'm afraid we have a problem in the cable phone charger in my case would I have as an extension to the pen between the plug and mobile, but from the first day that I have the iphone 5 have it so ... it might not this cable correctly.

I'll try again is to leave it charging overnight without the extension and if it works it will communicate.

A greeting

I have also suffered this strange phenomenon and I have figured it out. It seems that when you have Do Not Disturb turned on on a schedule the chances are that your alarm is set to trigger during this scheduled DND window. If you alter your DND settings to finish before your triggered alarm time you will notice the screen lights up when your alarm goes off.

This didn't used to happen and seems to be a "feature" of iOS 9.

See how you go with that.

🙂

Hi VampiressX 🙂

That is an excellent suggestion to try, and we did so this morning on my wife's 6s. Setting the DND off time to 7:30 and the alarm to 8:00am. No joy, the light did not come on with the alarm, and the screen does not respond to touches. (You can wake it up with the home button).

At the same time, on my 6s, I set the DND off time to 8:30 and the alarm to 7:59am and it worked perfectly, lighting up.

I think I may give it until iOS 9.2 and then take it in to the Genius Bar along with a printout of this forum thread.

I have considered a complete wipe and fresh install (ouch). As I read on Daring Fireball, if they want us to trade phones each year, they're going to need to make it a seamless process!

Thanks for your idea!

Scott

Thanks to this thread, I have forgotten to even look at my phone half the mornings when my alarm goes off, since I almost always press snooze. Now that I know to press the volume buttons to snooze, I'm all good. However, I noticed this morning that the screen was on when the alarm went off the first time. I also noticed that when it went off again, and I tried to use touchID to turn off the alarm, it didn't work, but it usually works. This isn't the first time.

I have DND set to turn off at 6am, and alarm at 6:30, so I've never had the alarm going off while in DND. I'm also now running 9.1, but I know that 9.1 didn't initially solve the problem.

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.

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.