iPhone alarm is silent randomly

Hel_z wrote:

Hi there, I’ve had this same problem on my iPhone XS for a while and finally found the solution. Go to your setting — Face ID and passcodes — turn off Attention Aware Features. I had this on before and according to the Apple Store staff, your camera may be scanning for a face when the alarm goes off and therefore automatically turn the sound off. I’ve had no problems since then (a week ago) with the alarm, fingers crossed it will stay this way. Hope this helps.

How do you know that the person you're replying to, who posted two years ago, has a FaceID capable device?

It's highly likely that there are multiple reasons for people having problems with their alarms. Yours may be a solution for some people but, I suspect not all.

FWIW having the same issue on my XS on iOS 12.3.1.

Have tried all the suggestions on this thread but can’t get it to consistently work. About once every other week I wake up to the alarm screen but no sound.... fortunately haven’t overslept by more than 30 min so far, but seems like such a simple issue for a $1k phone to have?

racalice wrote:

FWIW having the same issue on my XS on iOS 12.3.1.

Have tried all the suggestions on this thread but can’t get it to consistently work. About once every other week I wake up to the alarm screen but no sound.... fortunately haven’t overslept by more than 30 min so far, but seems like such a simple issue for a $1k phone to have?

What did Apple say when you talked to them?

I use an App called " Alarm Clock for Me - Wake Up ! " (catchy name isn't it?) , instead of the Apple alarms. And I also rely on a physical alarm clock. I like the iPhone so much that this long-time alarm problem of theirs is not going to cause me to switch phones.

In addition to the suggestion that we've been making for a long time that you periodically clear out your alarms, I recently read another interesting one. Set a second alarm for one minute later than the first alarm.

I had been doing that for a few years. Always setting backups a minute or so after the prior alarm. Woke up (thanks to my Echo) to several alarms showing onscreen on my phone but apparently all snoozed (the phone wasn't even where I could easily reach it), then another alarm went off with no sound at all (without me looking at front camera). Ringer volume was set to max. I have iPhone X.

Same here. I tried switching to Android. I gave it a good 8 months, actually. The alarms are great. Other than that, I think I was traumatized. It was a huge headache. I have been with Apple since the iPhone 3G & could not stand the Samsung Galaxy 9, even though it was all nice and fancy with a good alarm and camera. I gave it to my teenage son and took my iPhone 7 back from him. I feel much more comfortable now & can finally type normally and not have games crashing, buggy, and lagging all the time. Big sigh of relief. For anyone that loves the iPhone platform & has not had an Android smartphone in the past, I encourage them to not attempt the switch. It was really that bad for me. I almost threw it across the room on many occasions. (I have also used Macs for 16-17 years, so that made it even more difficult.)

Let me add to the chorus. I have awoken to find the alarm going off, but with no sound. When that happens, the phone (iPhone X) will not play sound form ANY apps, until a restart. Well, when I put the phone down at night, to the best of my knowledge the sound is working, so at some point overnight while charging, perhaps some notification corrupts the software. It hasn't made me late to work YET, but Apple should research and fix what is a software flaw. This also seems to happen in the same breath that responses to screen swipes are delayed. I've had it happen with many apps running and also with only 1 or 2 apps running. This issue seems to go back a couple years. I am on iOS12, for the record. HELP!

Is there a way we can send this entire post and comments to Apple as a support ticket or formal complaint? I’d like to know what they have to say about it - other than their standard advice that does not work.

j0hnnyscene wrote:

I had been doing that for a few years. Always setting backups a minute or so after the prior alarm. Woke up (thanks to my Echo) to several alarms showing onscreen on my phone but apparently all snoozed (the phone wasn't even where I could easily reach it), then another alarm went off with no sound at all (without me looking at front camera). Ringer volume was set to max. I have iPhone X.

Unfortunately, it's a rare problem with what appear to be multiple causes. That makes it hard to troubleshoot and hard to resolve. I suggest that everyone who has this problem contact Apple Support. Unless Apple has enough reports and enough information, it's going to be way down the priority list.

fast-tl wrote:

Let me add to the chorus. I have awoken to find the alarm going off, but with no sound. When that happens, the phone (iPhone X) will not play sound form ANY apps, until a restart. Well, when I put the phone down at night, to the best of my knowledge the sound is working, so at some point overnight while charging, perhaps some notification corrupts the software. It hasn't made me late to work YET, but Apple should research and fix what is a software flaw. This also seems to happen in the same breath that responses to screen swipes are delayed. I've had it happen with many apps running and also with only 1 or 2 apps running. This issue seems to go back a couple years. I am on iOS12, for the record. HELP!

"Adding to the chorus" here does nothing to get Apple's attention. As I noted before, it's a rare problem with what appear to be multiple causes. That makes it hard to troubleshoot and hard to resolve. I suggest that everyone who has this problem contact Apple Support. Unless Apple has enough reports and enough information, it's going to be way down the priority list.

So, contact Apple directly.

Hel_z wrote:

Yes please. I don't know why they haven't responded and helped at this point.

The reason that Apple hasn't responded here is because this is a user-to-user support forum. Apple's participation here is minimal. This was explained in the Terms of Use to which you agreed when you registered.

If you want help and a response from Apple, use the Contact Support link at the top right of every page of these forums.

I am so relieved to hear other people are experiencing the same problem. I have missed important meetings at work and I hate not knowing before bed if my alarm will go off or not. Phone is on silent mode, but volume is up all the way, no Bluetooth headphones attached, there is no reason for it to be doing this. And the worst part is, it’s only sometimes. Sometimes it works fine. I never had this problem with other iPhones. Just my iPhone X. This is a problem that needs to be fixed. It’s a really big deal when your alarm doesn’t go off!

It appears that until someone is willing to file a class action lawsuit against Apple for damages from missing flights, lost income, etc., this issue will never be resolved. And how would one prove Apple is at fault? Set up a video camera to record the device every night? Please.

It is beyond disappointing that there are some of us that aren’t able to use such a basic function on our $1000+ devices just because it’s a “rare” issue with “multiple causes.”

[Edited by Host]

So glad I found this discussion. I'm a QA Engineer and for the past 3 months I've been dealing with the same problem with a 3rd party alarm app (has a lot of dependencies with apple's own software). Like somebody already said, this issue has many forms. It can be user related (alarms overlapping, device sound settings etc) or iOS software related. I've been trying multiple testing scenarios over the past 3 months and my conclusion is this: Randomly, and pretty seldom (for the most users during night-time ) the whole device sound system suffers a crash (or not necessarily a crash but an error of some kind) and due to this error the alarm will not make any sound. But hear me out, this is where it gets interesting; In a lot of scenarios I had more than one alarm in the morning set to, say, 6.00 and 6.30. In most cases the 6.00 alarm did sound and after stopping it, the 6.30 alarm did not sound (which for me is quite peculiar because the error should also affect the first alarm and not only the second one). However, if the device is brought close to the ears, a very low hissing sound can be heard with consistent frequency for the alarm that did not sound (or as some other users pointed out, no hissing sound but a very very low alarm volume). I'm still trying to get consistent reproduction steps for this. I think Apple is aware of this issue but because it happens so randomly and has a lot of different occurrences it's pretty hard to troubleshoot.