- Reddit users discovered that alarms might not trigger due to a hidden setting
- If you’ve experienced the same issue, here’s how to be sure your alarms work
We’ve all experienced the bleary-eyed panic of waking to find our alarms never went off.
And, whether our bosses believe it or not, Apple customers claim that their alarms are frequently failing to activate on the new iPhone 15.
Now, Reddit users, sick of missing their alarms, claim to have discovered the cause.
The issue appears to be down to a little-known feature in iOS 17 interfering with the clock app’s alarms.
In a post on Reddit, one iPhone user complained that their iPhone 15 alarms were not going off in the morning.
The poster asked: ‘Has anyone else had issues with their alarms failing to go off in the morning like this?’
They showed that they had set a number of alarms two to five minutes apart.
But they wrote that ‘only my alarm for 6:45 AM actually sounded, & I woke up to find that my earlier alarms had all remained “set” but failed to sound’.
The Reddit user also said that none of the alarms were recurring so they weren’t setting themselves again after the time passed.
And, to deepen the mystery, they say that they did not snooze any of their alarms in the morning.
However, other iPhone users soon found a solution to the problem.
The issue, suggested one Reddit user, was a little-known setting called ‘Attention Aware’.
In iOS 17, this feature allows the phone to detect when the user is paying attention to it.
The problem could be that the iPhone believes it is being looked at so doesn’t need to trigger a loud alarm.
Luckily, as frustrating as this issue might be, it is very easy to solve.
To make sure your alarms trigger all you need to do is turn off ‘Attention Aware Features’ in your iPhone’s settings.
This can be found in a couple of places; one is the Face ID & Attention option and another is under the Voice Control subsection of the Accessibility settings.
Once this has been deactivated the phone won’t believe that it is being looked at in the morning or silence any more alarms.
If this doesn’t work for you, iPhone users on Reddit also suggested several other solutions.
One commenter wrote: ‘What can happen is if you have too many alarms going off they can overlap with alarms you snoozed which has a small chance to glitch them.’
Users also suggested that switching off the Standby Mode on the most recent iPhone can solve the issue.
This feature, added with iOS 17, turns your phone into a smart display while it’s charging.
Whenever the phone is plugged in and turned on its side the screen will display a customisable interface usually including a clock.
However, some iPhone users suggest that this has interfered with their morning alarms going off as scheduled.
To deactivate standby mode, go to Settings and navigate to the StandBy menu.
From there you can simply toggle StandBy off and ensure your alarms definitely go off on time.
Laura Adams is a tech enthusiast residing in the UK. Her articles cover the latest technological innovations, from AI to consumer gadgets, providing readers with a glimpse into the future of technology.
