People who rely on the iPhone’s alarm to wake up from sleeping may be in for a rude awakening. Or rather un-awakening. Social media is filled with reports claiming that the iPhone alarm isn’t working, causing users to oversleep and turn to TikTok to complain about the issue before eventually calling their employer to let them know they’ll be late.
According to The Wall Street Journal’s Joanna Stern, Apple is aware of the problem and is working on a fix. She has not encountered the problem, alerting her followers on X that her iPhone woke her up “right on time.”
Apple has not stated the cause of the problem, but posters on social media and the Apple Support Community think the cause is a toggle in iOS called Attention Aware Features. With this feature on, the iPhone checks if the user is paying attention to the iPhone before “dimming the display, expanding a notification when locked, or lowering the volume of some alerts.” Turning this off seems to fix the alarm problem.
It’s not clear when this bug arrived, but the culprit is presumably iOS 17.4.1, which arrived on March 21. A second build of the update landed a week later but is only available by manually installing the IPSW using your Mac. It’s unclear whether this build fixes the issue. It’s possible that a fix could be included in the iOS 17.5 update, which is currently in beta, or a separate iOS 17.4.2 update sooner. iOS 17.5 is expected to be released sometime after Apple’s “Let Loose” event on May 7.
How to turn off Attention Aware Features in iOS
To turn off Attention Aware Features open the Settings app on your iPhone and tap Face ID & Passcode. Scroll down to the Attention section and look for Attention Aware Features. Flip the switch to the off position to deactivate this feature.
Apple also has a support document for the iPhone alarm, which includes tips for an alarm volume that is too low or quiet. We haven’t experienced the issue at Macworld and it’s unclear how widespread it is. However, it was covered on NBC’s Today show so it presumably affects a not-insignificant number of people.
Read our iOS 17 superguide to learn more about the features and updates coming to the iPhone operating system.
Author: Roman Loyola, Senior Editor
Roman has covered technology since the early 1990s. His career started at MacUser, and he's worked for MacAddict, Mac|Life, and TechTV.