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?

  • Chozo
    5•2 months ago

    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.