- Users report problems with the iPhone’s built-in alarm feature
- A Reddit thread says that some users’ alarms ring late and others don’t ring at all
- We’ve reached out to Apple for comment but have yet to hear back.
iPhone users are reporting abnormal behavior of their phones’ built-in alarm feature, with some alarms ringing hours after the scheduled time and others not ringing at all.
A Reddit post shared on r/iphone by user bryanlolwut (via Android Authority) showing an iPhone alarm set for 10:30 am that actually went off at 12:42 pm sparked a thread in which dozens of users have shared similar experiences.
Some users noted that this has been an ongoing problem: KnowingFalcon, for example, said: “This has been happening to me for years and I thought I was going crazy. I would wake up two hours after the alarm was set, look at the clock, and the alarm would ring silently, without sound or touch.”
Others shared stories of alarms going off during their commute, with one comment suggesting the issue dated back to iOS 9, which was released in 2015. User Giveback11 simply said in response: “I feel vindicated.”
It’s almost impossible to determine whether all of these comments reflect reality, but what is clear is that there is a real sense of discontent in the iPhone user base about what should be one of the most reliable features of any smartphone.
Furthermore, this is not the first time we have reported on this topic. After a segment on NBC’s Today Show that highlighted issues with iPhone alarms, Apple issued a statement saying a fix was on the way. Nine months and a full version of iOS later, it seems the problem persists.
In our previous report, we explained that the Attention Aware feature added with iOS 17 may be partly to blame: this is a setting that reduces the volume of alerts when your iPhone detects that you are looking at it.
Still, we’d like to think the iPhone is context-aware enough to determine when a user is sleeping or simply to exclude alarms from the Attention Aware feature.
Of course, we don’t know exactly what iPhone model or iOS version user bryanlolwut is working with, but the image shared (above) shows the alarm notifying via Dynamic Island, which would turn the phone into an iPhone 14 Pro or more new and This shows that even the latest and greatest iPhones are not immune to the problem.
We reached out to Apple for comment on the issue, but did not receive a response at the time of writing.
Still, iPhone owners will surely feel some sense of relief at these continuing reports, which at least suggest that waking up late might not be entirely their fault. We’ll have the latest updates as we hear them through our dedicated iPhone coverage.
