Miss your morning iPhone alarm? It's not just you, and Apple is looking into it

Dear _____, please excuse _____’s tardiness. Their alarm didn’t go off for (see below). Sincerely, The Register

iPhone failing to get you up on time lately? You're not alone – reports have been spreading of just such an issue. 

These rumors, as so many often do in today's age, began on social media. This time it was a rash of oversleeping TikTok users blaming their iPhone alarms failing to go off. 

Yeah, yeah, save the comments about "kids these days" – The Register may still be waiting on confirmation of the problem from the source, but others have noted Apple's confirmation of an issue, and that it's working on a fix.

No word on what the problem is, whether it's going to be a quick fix, any workarounds, or when anyone can expect a resolution, so cue the speculation engine.

Some of the TikTok users who may bring this article to their managers to use as proof for their tardiness have said the problem lies with an iPhone feature available from Series X onward known as "Attention Aware." 

That feature uses the TrueDepth camera on the front of the iPhone, which uses an infrared dot mapping system to track a user's face. If an iPhowner is looking at their device when they get an alert, for example, Attention Aware will know the phone is in their hand and turn the volume of the alert down.

Attention Aware also prevents screen dimming when a user is actively looking at their phone and can be used to prevent someone from unlocking someone else's phone by requiring attention while using Face ID.

In other words, a handy feature. But is it preventing iPhone alarms from going off? Apple isn't feeling chatty, so we've no clue if there's an Attention Aware bug at the root of the issue. 

Those suffering from this issue can try disabling Attention Aware in the Face ID & Passcode section of the Settings app. Alternatively, iPhone users should be sure they didn't end up with other settings out of whack – while the fondleslab has few extraneous push buttons, it does still happen.

Barely a week has passed since this vulture pulled his iPhone from his pocket to find the screen had turned black and white. A quick fix, but if that can happen, others could have easily slipped, opened the Settings app, and turned the Ringtone and Alerts volume slider under Sound and Haptics down to zero.

Those attempts notwithstanding, please consider this article a valid note of tardiness for the bearer for this day and any future days until Apple deploys a fix. ®

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