When the iPhone alarm goes silent or not set properly, you may fall asleep, miss deadlines, etc. While it may seem like a black and white issue, there can actually be a number of reasons why your iPhone alarm isn’t working.
Even if you have already tried a few things to increase the alarm volume on your iPhone, please follow the methods below, which are ordered by ease of use. Start at the top and try each alarm fix, testing your alarm after each one to see if the alarm goes off again.
Raise the volume
Don’t skip this step. It is actually possible to increase the volume using the buttons on the side of the phone without increasing the alarm volume. This is because the iPhone allows you to control two completely different sets of sounds with the same buttons.
For example, if you have a streaming music app open, using the buttons will control that volume instead of the alarm volume. This means that if the alarm volume is turned down or turned off (even if the music volume is high), you will have a silent alarm.
Go to Settings > Sounds , or Settings > Sounds & Haptics , and make sure RINGER AND ALERTS is set to a reasonable volume. Also here is the Change with buttons option , which you should turn off if you want to make sure that the ringer and alarm volume never change when you change the system volume with the buttons.
To test the sound without waiting for the alarm to go off, open Clock > Alarm , tap Edit , and select an alarm. Go to Sound and choose a ringtone from the list; if you can hear it, it should work fine when the alarm goes off.
Something to look for when using the volume buttons is what the pop-up window says when you turn the volume up or down (see image above). If you see Ringer , then you know you’re adjusting the ringer and alarm sound, while Volume is for games, videos, music, and other sounds.
Restart your iPhone
Reboot an iPhone 6.
Restarting is a common practice with technology to fix small problems, and you can do the same with your iPhone to see if it fixes an alarm that isn’t working.
To restart your iPhone, press and hold the power button until you see the power off slider, or press and hold the power button while pressing and holding the volume button. The method you need to use depends on the model of your iPhone.
See How to reset any iPhone model for help.
Choose a louder alarm sound
Some of the iPhone alarms are quieter than others, so if you choose one of them, and especially if the alarm volume is not high, you may not hear it ring. Another thing to keep in mind is to make sure that None is chosen as the alarm sound, for obvious reasons.
Change the iPhone alarm sound from the Clock app. Open the Alarm tab, tap Edit, and then choose the alarm you want to change the sound for. Go to Sound and preview ringtones or songs to find something you think will work for you.
Check the alarm time setting
If your alarm sounds but is silent, then this method will not help you. However, for iPhone alarms that are set in the app but don’t go off at the designated time, you may not have the correct time or day set.
For example, if your alarm is supposed to go off every day at 12:15 PM, and it worked yesterday but not today, the alarm is most likely not set to repeat.
Click Edit in the Alarm section of the Clock app , then tap the alarm you want to edit. Go to the Repeat settings and make sure there is a checkmark next to the days of the week you want the alarm to go off on. Touch a day to turn the alarm on or off for that day.
If your alarm goes off at the wrong time during the day, then you are most likely confusing AM and PM, which is surprisingly easy to do. Edit the alarm and change it to the appropriate time of day, and be sure to tap Save when you’re done.
Turn off or change the bedtime feature
If you have Bedtime enabled on your iPhone and the wake up time is set to the same time as another alarm, neither of them may go off. To avoid this silent alarm conflict, change your bedtime or your regular alarm.
To find the bedtime settings on your phone, open Clock and tap Bedtime at the bottom. Here you can disable bedtime or slide the bell icon to a different time.
Delete and recreate the alarm
For whatever reason, the iPhone may not have created the alarm correctly. Or, maybe it worked for a while but then stopped due to a bug or incompatibility after an iOS update.
Open the Clock app in the Alarm tab and swipe left to delete the alarms or go to Edit first and then tap the red minus buttons to find the Delete option . You can create new iPhone alarms with the plus button in the top right corner of the Clock app.
Use only one alarm clock app
If you have more than one app that can trigger alarms, you may have problems. Stick with the default iPhone alarm clock app, or turn it off entirely and use something else.
However, keep in mind that third-party alarm clock apps are not as well integrated into your iPhone as the built-in one. This means that you will most likely have to keep the app open for the alarm sound to play, as well as use the system volume (not the ringer) to adjust the alarm sound.
For example, if the alarm clock doesn’t ring in your third-party app, open the app (so it’s visible and on screen), then use the volume buttons to turn it up. This will ensure that the app’s volume is loud enough to be heard regardless of the iPhone’s ringer volume.
If disabling third-party alarm clocks didn’t fix your iPhone alarm sound issue, delete them completely, restart your phone, and try using the stock alarm clock again.
Turn off Bluetooth and disconnect headphones
iPhone alarms should sound through the phone’s speakers and not through any Bluetooth devices or headphones. However, this may not always be the case.
If the phone has a software bug or is behaving erratically, you can try playing the alarm through those devices if they are actively connected to the iPhone while the alarm is sounding.
Depending on how you have configured the volume and ringer settings, and where these accessories are located when the alarm goes off, you may not hear anything.