How to fix iPhone alarms not going off

An unknown number of iPhone users have been reporting that their alarms may go off on time, but without making a sound, so it's not their fault they're late at all.

Maybe Apple's latest earnings are going to be so bad that the company is experimenting with making people sleep in and miss the call. Or possibly iPhone users are letting their alarms vibrate instead of make sounds.

While there are long-standing threads on the Apple support forums about the issue, the one solid fact appears to be that the Wall Street Journal's Joanna Stern has a really tight schedule. According to her tweet asking if the rumors are true, she gets up at 6:50 A.M. daily.

Not 7 A.M., not 6:30 A.M., but dead on 6:50 A.M., so she has places to be, things to do — and her alarm works just fine. And, frankly, so do ours.

Today Show called me last night and said iPhone alarms aren't working! I hadn't heard that but Apple confirmed this AM that it is aware of an issue causing some alarms not play a sound and that it's working on a fix.

My iPhone alarm woke me up right on time at 6:50AM! Anyone out
— Joanna Stern (@JoannaStern) April 30, 2024

AppleInsider has reached out to Apple regarding the alleged problem, but as yet can't confirm it or a solution.

There are reports that it may be tied to the iPhone's attention awareness feature. This is the StandBy option that lets users show a clock that is constantly on screen all night, but brightens slightly when it's being looked at.

Allegedly, turning off attention awareness resolves the issue, at least for some users. Here's how to turn Attention Awareness off.

Go to Settings
Choose Accessibility
Tap on Face ID & Attention
Toggle Attention-Aware Features off

Or alternatively just turn over and have a lie-in. Use this article to back you up.

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13 Comments

randominternetperson 3101 comments · 8 Years

About 7 months ago

I bet she's a commuter.

My alarm is set for 6:40 because I have to leave the house by 7:18 to catch a 7:29 train.

6ryph3n 61 comments · 17 Years

I can’t confirm a cause or a solution, but this happened to me a couple of months ago. I’ve been using my iPhone for years and never had an issue until the day it just didn’t go off. Same repeating alarm that I use every day. I tested another alarm as I was driving to work and it didn’t go off either. It wasn’t just silent, it just didn’t go off at all.

No problems since then though.

GrannySmith99 59 comments · 2 Years

This happened to me. On investigation the 'sound' setting for all my alarms had been set to None! I did not do this so it may have happened during a software update.

Annoying, but the simple solution was to go through all my alarms and change the sound setting to anything but none. I've not had an issue since but I was late for work one day before I solved the issue.

StrangeDays 12980 comments · 8 Years

I’ve run into this one recently. My AW will still buzz me, but my iPhone is silent.

mike1 3437 comments · 10 Years

Every once in a while my phone will become silent for no apparent reason. No notification sounds, timers, alarms, keyboard clicks etc. Always corrects with a reboot.

I play all my games with sounds off in the game's settings. They also typically silence other sounds so as not to interrupt while playing. I suspect that one of the games is not releasing the sound functionality when I am not playing. But that's just an unverifiable hunch.