iPhone alarm is silent randomly

The alarm not sounding is a symptom. Unfortunately, it can be the symptom of a number of different problems. That means there is no one solution. Based on what you've said, I concur with the person at Apple Support. It's what I've recommended once or twice in this thread, I believe.

Sounds like a cop out to me. That's the kind of stuff they always say when they know there's an issue and it's their fault. You'll be wasting a lot of time and effort for nothing, in my PROFESSIONAL opinion.

bigdogfur wrote:

You sound like an insufferable know-it-all.

You're certainly entitled to your opinion. It's unfortunate, of course, that you think being rude to people you've never actually met is acceptable. I'm not sure what caused you to get your knickers in such a twist. I agree with you that it's unfortunate that this is a problem. Like many people here, I'd prefer a completely separate setting for the alarm volume. I've let Apple know that.

Let me ask you, am I wrong in saying that 1) there appear to be multiple causes for alarm problems and 2) doing a restore to factory settings and testing is a valid troubleshooting step?

douglas2010 wrote:

Does everyone see a Rubber Ducky next to their own name, or is that just me?

It depends on what avatar you've chosen from the ones Apple provides. Or, if you've reached a sufficiently high level (four, I think), you can upload your own picture. That's why my avatar is a picture (sorry, not a great one) of my cat.

I think I know what the issue most people are encountering is... Basically if the screen fades to black after an alarm goes off pushing the 'home' button to wake the screen makes the alarm go completely silent while it waits for the user to select 'Snooze' or 'Stop'. It stays silent indefinitely. This is a massive design flaw in my opninion and has NOTHING to do with volume settings but nobody seems to have put their finger on the issue. I've woken up late countless times before I worked this out and it has been the same across many versions of iOS.

If this issue doesn't get resolved soon I really hope people would resist the urge to flood similar threads with suggestions of checking your volume and settings. I think it's safe to say most people would be smart enough to do this and it seems to have created an air of doubt around anybody who has experienced the issue MANY TIMES OVER MANY YEARS! I guess if you are a super chirpy morning person this will never happen but if you sleep heavy it's VERY EASY to do this by accident thinking you have hit snooze. Apologies for the tone but I find this issue and most of the threads addressing it very infuriating.

I have had the "displayed, -- but silent" alarm issue many times over many years, and I agree the thread answers about mute buttons and volume settings are very frustrating. I do not have a Home button on my latest phone, and the problem still happens. Apple has told me to back up the phone to the cloud, and reset to factory settings. But I have yet to try this solution because I believe I will lose a few things permanently, and I have been using a physical alarm clock instead for now.

Didn't read it all through but someone said before that:

If You're setting multiple alarms, they mess up with each other if You snooze them.

I've noticed the same issue even if I don't snooze them.

I'm having problems waking up, therefore I set multiple alarms. One is definitely not enough. The excuse that my alarm didn't work is not trusted anymore. It's been too many times.

So, I've got few questions:

1.How long will the alarm sound until it stops. (I noticed that it is the specific amount of time)

2.In how many minutes is it going to ring again? (if it will)

3.How many times will it repeat this cycle?

4.What's gonna happen if one alarm is working, and there is another one comes up? Which one is gonna sound? If the first one will start ringing, then will the second start ringing after the first one is off?

12.2 is my first encounter with this bug. I remember a few years ago when iOS had a daylight saving time glitch that caused the clock to be wrong and alarms to go off late. It made the national media and the bad publicity resulted in a quick fix by Apple. Maybe it’s time to be vocal about this to the media since this thread goes back years without a fix. I’ll be posting about this on social and sending it in to tech media.

I’ve had this same problem. I have class at 9 every morning and have about 6 alarms set for the hour between 7:30 and 8:30. More than half the time I sleep through my class and wake up with my alarms on my screen and having to turn off all of them, but they werent making any noise. Is it possible that the alarms only go off for a certain amount of time before they silence? I’m not sure but I’ve missed way too much stuff to rely on this again

kaylin179 wrote:

I’ve had this same problem. I have class at 9 every morning and have about 6 alarms set for the hour between 7:30 and 8:30.

Are you snoozing any of the alarms? If so, that could be part of the problem. If the snoozed alarm goes off at the same time as the next alarm, they may both be silenced.

Is it possible that the alarms only go off for a certain amount of time before they silence? I’m not sure but I’ve missed way too much stuff to rely on this again

If the alarm is working correctly, it will continue to go off until you turn it off.

Try deleting all of the alarms. Then set up one or, at most two. Test.

Hi Gus. It is not that the alarm is low or that there are headphones, bluetooth or wired connected. The ringer volume was almost at full, the do not disturb was not enabled. It just randomly happens that when the alarm goes off, the screen shows the alarm, but NO sound and no vibrate. My alarms are set to both ring and vibrate. Not even low sound. None.

I’ve had this problem since I bought a new iPad Pro late last year. My iPhone X works fine but not the iPad. The alarms will display but the sound will either be so quiet as to be inaudible if you’re sleeping or sound at the right volume for literally 1 second and then decrease to near nothing. In my case it has nothing to do with multiple alarms, muting, setting the ringer volume too low or etc. It simply doesn’t work right.

Here I am, 2019, WAY after the original post to say that this STILL happens to me. It’s completely random. I can press snooze on my alarm, lie in bed awake, notice it’s not gone off in a while, check it and see that it appears (on the screen) to be going off, but there is no sound or vibration, press snooze again to see if it does it again, and then it works fine the next time it goes off. All my settings are fine. This is becoming a more frequent problem, and I am late getting my son to school sometimes because of it. I once missed a very important meeting. I have missed doctor appointments and more because of it. It’s not that I’m simply sleeping through it, though I’m sure that has happened before, because I was awake and talking to my husband when it did it again recently. Finally, there was my proof that I was not just sleeping through it. This is SO frustrating. I tried switching to Android recently. (Quite a traumatic experience, lol.) The one thing I really liked about it was the dependable alarm. Even if it went off until it shut itself off, it would go off again after about 10 minutes. It never did what this Apple alarm does, so I know it’s not me. I have triple checked the settings and followed the help instructions. It works properly about 85-90% of the time, but that is not acceptable. I need this to be dependable. (Also, I have no 3rd-party alarm apps on my phone.)

Yep. Just happened to me this morning. This has happened to me a few dozen times over the years. Doesn't matter what iPhone I have, it randomly happens. I now have the XS and it still does it. I've tried setting extra alarms just in case the first one doesn't work, but nope, whatever the problem it is it'll apply to all your alarms. Today no sound came from my phone, even after switching the silent on and off multiple times. Open other apps to see if there would be sound and nope, no sound. I had to turn off the phone and turn it back on for the sound to work again. Really frustrating. Such a pain to have to rely on another device for a backup alarm. Fix this issue Apple.

I think this may be the best working explanation of what's happening. I usually set multiple alarms but have also had this issue when I set one alarm. I think I'm accidentally somehow hitting the home button in my half-awoken state before going back to sleep thinking I hit snooze.

Also totally agree with your paragraph about people being sensible in the comments. I was relieved to find out a lot of people have been having this problem seemingly randomly. One of the reasons I've been setting multiple alarms for some time now is because I'm afraid one of them will go off silently.