Alarm on my phone didn't go off the other morning!

Post Reply New Topic

On Friday morning I was late for work because my alarm on my phone didn't go off. Now I'm anxious about it happening again.

I've been relying on my phone alarm to wake me up for several years, and I've had my current phone just over a year and it's happened about 2 or 3 times before (the alarm not going off I mean).

I make sure to carefully set my alarm each night before work, and I actually set TWO alarms just in case one doesn't go off, but this time neither of them went off. I wondered maybe I might have been in a deep sleep and not heard it, but if I miss it, it automatically goes on to snooze, and then goes off minutes later - and also if I don't turn the alarm off after it goes off I get a pop-up message on my phone lock screen telling me that the alarm had gone off, etc. But when I looked at my phone both the alarms were unset, as though I hadn't set them at all.

I remember setting my alarms the night before, and each one said like "alarm set for 8 hours etc", and I'm not the sort to deactivate things on my phone in my sleep, as it's too fiddly to do with your eyes closed. Also I had it on loud. After I got up I tested the alarm for a minute later and it went off loud and clear.

Can iphones just deactivate it's own alarm like that?
I have an alarm clock, but the ring it produces scares me so I'm afraid to use it as an alarm, and I don't have or use a clock radio. I've always relied on my phone, ever since I was about 15.

It happened to me a few times before, with a few different phones(no iphone though). It's a glitch.
That's why I set alarm clock on 2 devices - my tablet and my phone - if I know I have to wake up and noone is there to wake me up in the morning in case the alarm doesn't go off.
I also put one of the devices (the later one) away from my bed because I learned I am able to wake up for long enough to turn off the alarm clock and... go to sleep again - without even realizing it. I am probably thinking it's weekend or something (I use alarm clock everyday because I am trying to change my biological clock).

Usually the second device alarm clock doesn't even have to get off - The first one is enough for me to wake up (after a 10 mins snooze) and then I go to the other one and turn it off before it makes a sound(it's set 4 mins after the snooze). You can do the same thing with your normal alarm clock. If your phone goes off you won't need to hear the scary sound at all because you turn it off in time and if your phone fails you will have a scary wake up but you won't be late for work.

If you have a do-not-disturb function on your phone, make sure you set the alarm to be an exception or the do-not-disturb function won't let the alarm sound. One possibility.

I've never used the do not disturb feature so I don't think it was enabled.

I've changed my alarm tone to a loud country bit of music, with vibration on. It seems to alert me awake. Maybe the other alarm tone I had got too familiar with me. It was a rather soft tone and I used it for a long time. But even if I did miss it, there's usually a little notification in a box saying that the alarm had gone off.

It done it again this morning, although luckily today wasn't a work day. I woke up BEFORE the alarm was due to go off, but then when I looked at my phone the alarm wasn't even activated, and I remember I definitely set it last night.

I think the problem MIGHT be setting the alarm too long ago. Like last night I set it for, like, 11 hours time, and maybe that is too long and the phone 'forgets' it maybe?

Maybe you could try DLing an alarm app instead of using the one apple wants you to use.

If I had to rely on an alarm, I would have a back up. Phone plus a regular alarm clock. If both failed to go off, I would take it as a sign from god haha.

Nah. Phones are not supposed to "forget" alarm clocks. It could happen with about 24h time, because the alarm might go off a day before the date and could accidentally get turned off in your pocket but 11h is nowhere long enough even if the phone doesn't recognize difference between AMvsPM. It must be some kind of software failure or you are setting it wrong. Maybe you are forgetting to enable it or click "save"? Did you make sure it is activated or just "set" it and went to bed?

Did you try using the "repeatable" feature? You can set the alarm to repeat on set days of week so you don't have to set it everyday. Less chance for your own error.

I would also try either to restore the phone to factory settings or install a different alarm clock app.

It's easy to set an alarm. When it's set, an icon appears at the top of the screen, which is a little picture of an alarm clock, so I know it's set. On my phone it is automatically activated/saved when set because when I've set it it tells me the number of hours it will go off in.

I don't use the set day feature because I don't work the same days every week, and I don't get up the same time every day off. So I set it the night before I go to bed. My phone is always by my bed so I always remember to set it properly.