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It’s 2025, and the iPhone still has an annoying alarm bug

The iPhone 14 Pro's Dynamic Island showing the timer and music playing.
Andy Boxall/Digital Trends / Apple

Have you ever woken up late, only to discover your alarm never actually went off? You aren’t alone. For a long time now, iPhone users have reported a disruptive bug that allows their alarms to trigger but with no sound or vibration. It’s practically the same as having no alarm at all, and despite repeated promises, Apple has yet to resolve it.

On the r/iPhone subreddit, user u/bryanlolwut posted a picture showing his 10:30 a.m. alarm going off at 12:42 p.m. Other users flooded the comments with similar stories and complaints, with one person simply stating, “I feel vindicated.”

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It’s 2025, and the idea that we can’t trust our phone alarms to wake us up is ridiculous — but despite that, I’ve also woken up to my alarm silently ringing beside the bed. I assumed I had silenced it without waking up, but these reports make me question that.

An image of an iOS alarm not going off on time.
u/bryanlolwut / Reddit

User u/simplydan24 wrote, “I stopped using the native clock for alarms years ago.” Another user suggested that Apple should be legally responsible for the consequences of missed appointments. Another user, u/Lawyer_Morty_2109, said, “I remember this happening all the [way] back since iOS 9.” The reports aren’t limited to Reddit, either; there are plenty of discussions on Apple’s official forums about the issue, too.

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Until an official fix is released, there are several steps you can take to help reduce the risk of this happening. The first is to set multiple alarms; I use three, spaced several minutes apart.

Make sure to check your Focus and Do Not Disturb settings. If you enable those during the night, the mode settings could overwrite the alarms. You can also go into SettingsSounds & haptics Ringtone and alerts and make sure the slider is set to maximum volume and that Haptics is set to Always play.

Patrick Hearn
Patrick Hearn writes about smart home technology like Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, smart light bulbs, and more. If it's a…
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