Apple has announced that it is working on a bug that means the iPhone’s alarm may not go off as usual.
This follows reports that some users’ alarms are not going off as usual and therefore fail to wake them up.
Apple told the Today program that it is aware of the issue and is working to fix it. No information was provided on how the problem occurred or if there is a way to temporarily fix it in the meantime.
However, a number of users who encountered this situation suggested tips to make the alarm more reliable, whether or not it was affected by the bug.
In recent days, users have started reporting that their alarms are not sounding normally or not sounding at all. It’s unclear how widespread the problem is and it certainly doesn’t seem to affect all users. However, the bug has sparked a flood of complaints on TikTok and other social apps.
Some have reported that the problem can be solved by going into Settings and selecting the “Sound and Touch” section, which includes setting how loud the alarm and ringtone should be. If this is set to zero or too low, the alarm may not be heard.
The volume can be accidentally changed using the buttons on the side of the phone. To prevent the same mistake in the future, this option can be turned off in the same settings page.
Some users have suggested that the problems could be caused by Apple’s attention-demanding feature. This feature uses the iPhone’s face scanning to recognize when the device is being looked at and mutes the alarm when it detects that the owner has seen it.
However, this feature can cause the alarm to be accidentally muted, for example if the owner is sleeping with his iPhone facing him. This feature can be turned off in the settings under “Face ID and Passcode”.
But turning this off removes other useful attention-demanding features from the iPhone, such as hiding the contents of notifications until the phone is unlocked and ensuring that the device doesn’t automatically dim while you’re looking at it. As such, it may be more useful for diagnosing the problem than a long-term solution.
