[Question] My morning alarms aren't going off on my new phone and I don't know why
If I set an alarm for two hours from now, it will go off. I've tested this a few times.
But my morning alarms, at 6:07 and 6:13 am, just don't go off. I've been testing this for like a week now and I cant figure it out. Later in the day, maybe 3 or 4 hours later, the phone will alert me that I missed the alarm, even when my body clock wakes me up before the alarm and I lay awake watching my phone tick past the alarm time without it ever twitching or doing anything.
So far, I've tried:
Deleting all alarms and recreating them
Clearing the app cache and data, then rebooting
Removing Duraspeed system app which I suspected of causing problems
Toggling every setting and widget related to alarms and DND I can find
Here's my alarm setup:
Clock app settings:
Android sound settings:
Now, I suspected it was some battery thing killing the app, or DND preventing it from going off, but these settings all look correct to me:
And just now, its warned me about the missed alarm that I laid awake watching not go off:
Any ideas about what else to investigate, or what else to do? Should I just download and rely on a different alarm app or something?
On my PoCo phone, google clock was being killed during the night to preserve battery, even if I set it to "unrestricted". I have to use the MiClock for my alarm.
I'm starting to suspect that's the same problem what it is I'm dealing with. Mines also unrestricted, and if I set an alarm for sometime in the next few hours, it goes off, but if I set one for tomorrow morning, it won't.
If you google Ulephone and alarm clock, you'll find some more people complaining. It's likely something the manufacturer did to save battery. I'd say the preinstalled (native) alarm clock app is most likely to work, maybe they tested their own apps. Everything else is likely to be nuked on inactivity during the night.
Looks like you're connected to something via Bluetooth. Is it a pair of headphones? Could your alarms be going off and playing through them? That's happened to me a couple times.
Do you have a smart watch? I have a client who had no notifications coming in sometimes but not others and it turned out it was his watch taking over notifications. Disabling it was done from the watch and took effect immediately.
If I recall correctly I went to the list of all applications and checked the notifications and permissions from there because it shows more options.
But I also remember something related to hiding content out of the lock screen, possibly I tried to hide content out of the lock screen and had to revert that.
I know I'm not being very specific but maybe it can at least give you ideas.
I'll try this, but even if that were the case, the alarm should still have lit the screen up and maybe vibrated. The phone does nothing at all, doesn't stir, screen just stays black while I lay awake watching it.
I'm willing to bet that when you transferred your old phone's backup, something likely doubled-up on this recovery after the fact, and there's probably some busted metadata somewhere in your app settings. Try this:
I always recommend uninstalling the updates first when a system app is misbehaving, because they tend to back up slightly differently than regular apps do, and seem more prone to errors after restoring, in my experience. Settings > Apps > Find "Clock" > Three dots menu in the top-right > Uninstall Updates. Then go to the Storage & Cache option on that page, Clear Storage. Then go to the Play Store, find the Clock app and install whatever updates are available. Set the alarms back up and catch some Zs, and see if you wake up on time.
Alternatively, you could look for a better alarm clock app. The Google Clock app is fine enough, but I find Sleep As Android to be much better for wake-up alarms. It's got sleep tracking, and will try to wake you up slightly early if it detects that you're in an optimal sleep phase to wake up in, or it'll just go off at the set time if you don't cycle into an appropriate sleep phase in time. There's also a ton of options for different types of alarms (puzzle/math alarms, QR code alarms, etc). The free version is already pretty good, but the full version is 100% worth the purchase, IMO.
Not yet, I just got Simple Alarm and set it for 6:09, so if it goes off but my clock one doesn't go off at 6:07 tomorrow, then I'll know it's isolated to the clock app.
Gentlemen, it is with great pleasure that I announce my alarm went off this morning and I arrived at work on time.
Unfortunately, with all the fiddling around, I'm not sure quite what I did to fix it. I think that maybe just uninstalling and reinstalling the clock app from Google play fixed the problem. Either that, or fully disabling my scheduled Do Not Disturb function.
EDIT: I spoke too soon. My alarms didn't go off this morning. BUT I think I know why now.
It turns out that there were two apps called Clock. One that was cloned from my old phone, one that came with the new phone:
All my alarms were set up in my old clock.
But when I'm giving permissions and exemptions in the battery manager, I reckon thats affecting the new app, which has no alarms. So the old clock app is still getting randomly killed in the night.
I've uninstalled the old clock app and set up alarms in the new clock app.
I reckon that will fix the problem tomorrow, but I'll have to wait and see.
One way to check is to make a new alarm for ten minutes earlier or later than the old alarm, and see if that one sounds. I have DND turn off half an hour before my alarm goes off, but it also is supposed to ignore the alarm altogether (not interfere with alarm settings/sounds).
You may also want to see if the alarm is sounding on the old phone (if you haven't already wiped it, sold it etc).
Did this ever work? Have you tried factory resetting the phone and setting an alarm first thing? Maybe there's some setting you managed to change and can't find again. I know Android settings menus are a maze.
It's a new phone I've had for a few weeks. I cloned my old phone to it. Never had this problem on my old phone, but it has never worked correctly on the new phone.
I'm reticent to factory reset it, that's a drastic step to take just to fix the alarm.
I have other issues, like I'm not always getting all my SMS messages. But I'm pretty sure that's unrelated.