iPhone Alarm Sound Not Working? Here’s Why & The Fix!

Is your iPhone alarm not working? Do you have difficulty in listening to alarm sound? Check out what causes the issue and how to fix it.
Fix iPhone alarm not working

Every iPhone ships with a bunch of utilities that almost everyone needs. Although you can find third-party apps for these purposes, Apple’s apps on the iOS system do a commendable job. The Alarm app, which can double as a clock, timer, and bedtime management app, is one of those apps. More importantly, these apps work so seamlessly most of the time.

Having said that, you may come across times when the iPhone alarm sound stops working. You may not be able to see the alarm or listen to the alarm sound. Of course, this can be a severe problem if you use your iPhone as the alarm clock. Being late to office or school because you couldn’t hear the alarm sound is one of the worst things ever too.

You don’t have to worry, though. In this article, we have found a few reasons why your iPhone alarm is not working, along with a few fixes that you can try out. We hope this article helps you in finding the real issue and fixing it ASAP.

Why Is My iPhone Alarm Not Working?

Before we tell you the potential solutions to the problem, you should understand why your iPhone alarm is not working. As always, we can’t show you a single reason why the issue occurs. Instead, below, we’ve listed some of the common reasons why the iPhone alarm may not work.

  • The Alarm app on your iPhone is facing some kind of issue. This situation may cause the alarm not to work correctly.
  • You may have set a lower ringer level for your iPhone, you may not hear the alarm sound.
  • You may not notice the alarm if you have chosen a weak alarm tone, with lower elements. You might also have chosen no alarm tone at all.
  • You may have chosen the wrong date/time for the alarm to ring. If you have selected weekends in a place for weekdays, you know how things turn out.
  • You may have installed multiple alarm applications on your iPhone. These alarm apps may interact with each other and cause some issues with how alarms go off.
  • The Bedtime feature on your iPhone may be intervening with the alarms that you have set through the Alarm app.
  • Issues with audio routing can cause the alarms to ring through external audio devices that you have connected or paired to. This practically prevents you from listening to the alarm sound.

So, any of these issues can cause the iPhone alarm to stop working correctly. As it stands, our only solution is to check out multiple methods and see if one of them works.

Do iPhone Alarms Go Off When Phone Is On Silent?

This is a question that a lot of people have. Let’s listen to what Apple says on their official support page:

“Do Not Disturb and the Ring/Silent switch don’t affect the alarm sound. If you set your Ring/Silent switch to Silent or turn on Do Not Disturb, the alarm still sounds.”

So, even if you had enabled the Silent Mode on your iPhone, you will be able to listen to the alarm. That is, forgetting to change your phone from Silent to Ring won’t make you miss the alarm.

What To Do if Your iPhone Alarm is Not Going Off?

Here are the multiple fixes to follow if you find that your alarm isn’t going off or you can’t listen to the sound.

1. Check Your iPhone’s Sound and Volume Levels

This may be a no-brainer solution, but you should check this option before we proceed. In case you didn’t know before, you can use the volume control buttons on your iPhone to change two types of volumes.

  • Ringer/Alert Volume
  • Media Volume

By default, you cannot change the Ringer/Alert volume using the control buttons. However, you can find an option in the Settings >> Sound & Haptics that enables you to make that change. If you have enabled this option, you can press the volume up button to increase the ringer volume and vice versa.

check sound haptics on iphone

So, first, make sure that you have not enabled this option. If you have, you may accidentally reduce the alarm volume, which will cause the alarm to stop working correctly. In that case, disable the option and bring the ringer/alert levels to the highest. This will ensure that you listen to the alarm sound is loud enough.

2. Pick A Louder Alarm Sound

You can choose from a variety of alarm sounds while setting one. You may have selected an alarm sound that isn’t loud enough. Your first option here is to check how this goes. Go to the Clock app and choose the Alarms section to see the list of alarms that you have set.

choose alarm sound on iPhone

Try to play each ringtone and choose the one that suits you the best. Make sure you test a loud alarm tone before you decide to go with any of them. This way, you can know if the sound is loud enough to wake you up in the morning.

3. Delete and Re-add The Alarm

Although very unlikely, something wrong might have happened while setting up the alarm in the first place. For instance, you may have set the same go-off time for Bedtime and Alarm. This may create specific issues with how you listen to the sound. But, on the bright side, the solution is straightforward.

edit alarm on iPhone

You can go to the Alarm section on the Clock app and tap on the Edit button. From the upcoming list of alarm entries that you have made, you can choose the alarm that isn’t working. Simply remove the alarm and set it up again. You should be good to go.

Make sure that you select a louder, distinctive alarm sound while setting the new one.

4. Reboot Your iPhone

Rebooting your iPhone is an effective way to solve several issues. Non-working iPhone alarms are not an exception, per se. In case you had made some temporary changes on your device that caused the alarm app to malfunction, a restart should do the job.

You can either use the hardware keys to launch the reboot menu or use the Settings menu. Either way, wait for a few seconds before you turn the device back on. In most cases, this should solve the alarm issue, even if something was wrong with the Alarm app in the first place.

5. Check the Bedtime Feature

We mentioned earlier that the Clock app doubles as a bedtime manager for your iPhone. You can use this to schedule your sleep timings and get timely notifications. For instance, your iPhone will time you the precise time to go to bed so that you get the desired amount of sleep at night.

However, you should not set the alarm at the same time you have set as the Wake-up time. In this case, you may not listen to either alarm sounds. So, the first step you can follow is checking whether there is a conflict between the Bedtime time and the Alarm.

bedtime app management on iPhone

If you see such a conflict, you can rearrange any of them to make things smooth. This alarm issue won’t be happening if there is at least a minute’s difference between the Bedtime Wake time and the alarm, though. So, even if you don’t want to change the bedtime feature, you can simply move the alarm to a minute later.

6. Disable Bluetooth and Unplug Headphones

As we mentioned, issues with audio routing can cause some malfunction with the alarm sound. If you have kept a Bluetooth/wired headset connected to your iPhone, you may not listen to the alarm sound at all. In a few cases, the same might happen when Bluetooth devices are paired to your device.

So, if you encounter the problem often, we recommend that you disable Bluetooth connection before going to sleep. Similarly, you have to unplug any wired audio device so that the audio gets out through the iPhone’s built-in speakers.

Turn off bluetooth on iPhone

Please note that this isn’t normal behavior. Ideally, the iPhone should play the alarm sound through its built-in speakers, no matter what. Nevertheless, if there are routing issues of any sort, turning off Bluetooth can fix the problem for the short-term.

7. Remove Third-party Alarm Apps

In case you didn’t know, you can use third-party alarm apps on your iPhone. This should not come as a huge surprise, because there are so many smart alarm apps on the App Store. The real problem lies in the aspect of integration, though.
You may have installed one of these third-party alarm apps on your iPhone. You may also have set the alarm using the app. Due to possible issues on the software side, however, the alarm app may interfere with how the native Alarm app may function.
So, if you indeed have a third-party alarm, you can consider removing it. Or, if you prefer using that app, you must grant the proper set of permissions to work smoothly. More importantly, these apps may make some changes regarding the alert sounds as well.

8. Reset All Settings On Your iPhone

If the solutions mentioned above haven’t helped you, you should look at a full iPhone reset. This means you have to reset all settings on your iPhone. If some kind of software issues were causing the alarm to act up, this step should solve the problem once and for all.

You can do this by going to Settings >> General >> Reset and choose Reset All Settings. Do keep in mind that this does not remove any type of content from your iPhone. Instead, all the changes you have made on your iPhone will be reverted.

reset all settings on iphone to fix iphone stuck in headphone mode

9. Update Your iPhone

In some rare cases, software bugs on iOS can cause the alarm app to malfunction. However, Apple is prompt when it comes to rolling out bug fixes. So, if you started witnessing the alarm issue after an update, the best shot is waiting for the bug fix and updating your iPhone to the patch.

software update in iphone

You can go to Settings >> General >> Software Update and your iPhone will tell you if an update is available. After connecting to power and Wi-Fi, you can download and install the update on your device. Hopefully, it should fix the issue.

10. Restore iPhone with iTunes

Did you know that iTunes has an option to restore your iPhone to factory settings? Now that iTunes is a part of the Finder app; you can access it from there too. Anyway, if you feel that a restart/update does not fix the issue with an alarm sound, you should check this option. By the way, if you use a Windows PC, you can still download the latest version of iTunes and follow the steps.

restore iPhone using iTunes finder

You can follow this official support guide from Apple to restore your iPhone using the iTunes app. The process is simple, and it does a complete restoration of the iOS software. So, if your alarm app was facing any sort of software issue, you will have solace here.

11. Repair iOS System

If, unfortunately, the methods mentioned above haven’t helped you, you can check out this option for iOS system repair. System Repair on iOS analyzes, verifies, and repairs the different elements of iOS using a set of professional algorithms. iOS System Repair tools can instantly fix the issue, turning things to normal.

Tenorshare ReiBoot is one of the best iOS system repair software solutions in the market. You can use this to fix not only the alarm not working issues but also a variety of other software problems with your iPhone or iPad.

Tenorshare ReiBoot - Press Repair Operating System to repair your iDevice

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The most significant advantage here is that you can finish the process in no time at all. Because the System Repair utility does not interfere with your iPhone, you don’t have to worry about data loss, either. So, even if nothing else works, you have a shot with ReiBoot. Learn more from our Tenorshare ReiBoot Review here.

Conclusion

We have arranged the potential solutions in the order of easiness and control. You can try the first few ways first and then move on to the next. The last options, such as iPhone restore and iOS System Repair, are the sure-shot options in the worst-case scenario.

Is there any other method that has helped you to fix the iPhone alarm not working issue? Do let us know via your comments.

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