iPhone alarm is silent randomly

douglas2010 wrote:

I don't believe that Apple actually reads or monitors this thread. If someone can please post the best link for directly contacting Apple, I think we should all use that link and send Apple an email about this problem so that they will be sure to know about it. Thanks.

You are correct. Apple engineers and developers do not regularly monitor the forums. You can either contact Customer Support who, even if they cannot help you, will log the issue. Use the Contact Support link at the top right of every page of these forums. Or, you can use the product feedback page:

Product Feedback - Apple

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 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.

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.

Having this random problem as well. I have the iPhone XS Max with the latest iOS and this happens to me about once or twice a month. My routine is exactly the same every time. I always have the ringer switch set to silent because of the ridiculous amount of spam calls, I haven’t changed the Bedtime settings since I set them up when I got the phone, all the volumes are always at reasonable levels, and yet the alarm is randomly silent. This morning it was silent, but I did nothing different from the day before, and it worked then.

I really don’t think this is user error. There are so many people with the same issue, going back a couple years and on several different devices.

Also, I have nothing Bluetooth hooked up. My phone physically plugs in to my car for Car Play and I don’t have any Bluetooth devices. Since the last time the alarm failed to sound I have turned off Bluetooth on my phone, so hopefully it helps, but the issue is so random that it’s hard to tell.

costa781 wrote:

I’m going to lose my job over this I never have been late to work and now I’ve given a warning thanks apple

Is there something from preventing you from buying an alarm clock? I would think that a responsible person would find an alternate means of waking themselves up until they resolved the problem with their phone.

I want to add that at the same time when is no audio on phone sometimes phone also freezing and opening app or reacting on swipes after 5 or 10 secs after touching and it looks some kind of kernel panic. Previously I had iphone xs max and it did same bugs I described above. I noticed that bugs apeared after iOS 12.1.3 update. Then I switched to galaxy s10 plus and didn’t like some android aspects. And now switched back to iphone xs max and again noticed bugs returned I had on previous iphone xs max. Don’t think this is related to speakers. If there was speakers problem then phone restart wouldn’t help I think.

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!

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.

manu116 wrote:

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.

I think you've summarized it well. I encourage anyone who has this problem to contact Apple Support. The more data they have, the more likely they are to be able to figure it out.

Best of luck.

This just happened to me with my new iPhone XS max, and happened with my previous iPhone, an iPhone 6 multiple times.

I never could figure out the exact cause, although I did observe it happen and the cause of it on my old phone. My alarm was going off, and before I could reach for the phone to turn it off, a text message came in, and the notification of the text message silenced the alarm although it remained on screen. I assumed it was only if you receive a text or a phone call that would cause this bug, but since that didn’t happen this time, I’m thinking it could be any notification, like the notifications I get that I have a new email.

Angel-o wrote:

Apple please fix this “minor issue”

1) Apple is not reading here. If you want them to be aware that you are having a problem, you will need to contact them directly. You can start with the Contact Support link at the top right of every page of these forums.

2) This is not one issue. It's one symptom with a number of different causes. That, combined with the fact it's a relatively uncommon problem, makes if very hard to resolve quickly.

3) Buy an alarm clock.

I disagree about the phone being face down. It occurs to me and my sons with the phone face up.

All three of us experienced the issue this morning. I only have one alarm set, as does one of my sons.

I find the issue has become worse with the latest iOS update

@kjsnow25 Thank you very much for this post. I had been struggling for hours trying to "fix" this issue on my wife's and my new 11pro's, going through 7 step and 10 step processes to no avail. I could not figure out the purpose of the Attention Aware setting, but if you (or @douglas2010) would like to try to explain it I'm all ears, but I doubt I will be turning it back on! Thanks again! We never had this problem with my 5S or her 6Plus, but it was time and we will adjust.