Whether you need to wake up for school or work, or just to get your day started on time, your smartphone's built-in alarm is essential—no matter how much of a morning person you are.
Unfortunately, your phone's native alarm can sometimes malfunction for a multitude of reasons. To ensure you're not late for anything important, here are a few things you can try to fix your Android alarm.
1. Restart Your Phone
By restarting your device, the temporary cache is cleared. This means that any minor changes will be reset to their original state when your phone turns back on. In addition, a restart cycle clears the RAM, which stores the bits of data that you used while your phone was malfunctioning.
This is often the first troubleshooting fix for many smartphone issues, and that's because restarting your smartphone works for most problems. For most people, the Android alarm should work perfectly after a quick restart, but we've got a bunch of other fixes to try if it doesn't.
2. Check Your Alarm Volume and Ringtone
Most modern Android phones come with an independent volume control for alarms. If you mistakenly left the alarm volume silent or at a very low level, you won't hear it ringing despite the alarm actually going off.
To check your alarm's independent volume control, press the volume increase or decrease button on the side of your phone to make the volume slider pop up on your screen.
Accessing your volume controls may be different depending on your Android device. You may see a downward arrow, three horizontal dots, or another unique icon depicting sliders. You should be able to open up a volume drop-down menu, which then displays separate volume sliders for Media, Ringtone, Notifications, System, and sometimes Alarm.
If you don't see an Alarm option here, no worries. On some Android devices, you need to access the Alarm volume slider directly through your phone's Clock app. When you open your device's native Clock app, head to its Alarm screen and look for three horizontal or vertical dots to access volume settings.
If your alarm volume slider seems to be at max, there may be an issue with your alarm ringtone. A custom ringtone could be too quiet to wake you up, or it could just not be compatible with your device. Try out one of the default system options for alarm ringtones instead, and test it out with a new alarm.
3. Clear the Clock App's Cache and Storage Data
Clearing the cache for your phone's Clock app can often help. To do this, head to your phone's main settings app and tap on Apps > Clock > Storage > Clear Cache.
Alternatively, long-pressing the Clock app icon and selecting App Info—or tapping the lowercase "i" in a circle—also does the trick. From there, you'll just need to select Storage > Clear Cache.
If your Android alarms still aren't working, you can tap Manage Storage to the left of the Clear Cache option, and then select Clear data. As always, the option might be slightly different depending on what phone you're using.
The downside to clearing your Clock app's storage data is that if you erase the data, you'll lose any existing alarms and need to create them again. You can always take a screenshot of your alarms or make a note of them. Then, it only takes a few minutes to create new alarms afterward.
If you're still having issues after clearing the Clock app's cache and storage data, try to force close or force stop the app. Follow the above instructions to get to the Clock's App Info screen, and then select the Force Stop option. Depending on your Android device, this option may read Force Close.
4. Check Your Clock Alerts or Notifications Setting
On some built-in Android Clock apps, there's often a feature within the settings that can be toggled to silence alarms when the system's sound is off. When toggled on, this feature will cause alarms and timers to vibrate instead of making a sound when your phone is set to Mute or Vibrate.
Getting to this setting may be a unique process for different Android devices, and it may not be an option on your specific Android phone, depending on which smartphone brand you have or which version of Android you're running.
For a Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra running Android 13, as an example, you'd head to your phone's main settings, tap Apps > Clock > Clock Settings, and look at the Alerts section at the top of the screen.
There's a toggle next to an option that reads Silence alarms when system sound is off. Make sure this is toggled off, and hopefully, your alarms will start ringing even if your phone is on mute or vibrate.
5. Check Your "Do Not Disturb" Settings
When you set up and customize Do Not Disturb properly, it can be an incredibly useful tool on Android devices. But it's notorious for causing issues in other apps, including the Clock app. It's easy to not even realize that you've activated the Do Not Disturb feature until important apps seemingly stop working.
Navigate to Settings > Notifications > Do not disturb. Alternatively, you can simply take the shortcut through the Quick Settings panel. Swipe down the top of the screen with your finger twice to open the fully expanded quick settings tray, and long-press on Do not disturb.
Now select Allow exceptions. This will show you a list of possible options, and you need to make sure Alarm is one of your allowed options. Make sure to hit the toggle button next to it to enable it. Or, you may alternatively see an Alarms and sounds section on this screen, which you can tap to open and then toggle on the button next to Alarms.
6. Reset Preferences for the Clock App
If none of the previous solutions work for you, you can try to reset your app preferences. This won't delete any personal data (like the alarms you have set). However, it will reset all the settings on your phone to their default values—across all your apps.
If an abnormal setting was disturbing the normal functioning of your Clock app, it should be fixed with this method. To reset the preferences, open your phone's main settings and use the search bar to type "Reset." Then, tap on Reset all settings > Reset settings.
Different phone brands have this reset feature hidden in various menus, so it's easiest to simply search your phone's settings to find it. With luck, this should fix the issue completely, but should only be used as a last resort.
7. Download Another Alarm App
If all else fails, you can download an alarm app that may even have more features than your phone's native option. We've rounded up some of the best alarm clock apps for Android if you don't feel like doing the research yourself. When you choose to download an alarm clock, any potential issues you run into are usually fixed by force closing the app or uninstalling it and reinstalling it.
Android Alarm Sometimes Not Going Off? Now You Can Fix It
We usually take our phone's alarm feature for granted. Setting an alarm for 6:00 AM and peacefully drifting into sleep—this is our way of living. We only realize its integral role in our lives once it stops working.
Troubleshooting your Android phone's Clock app doesn't require you to be a technical wizard or anything. All you need to know is which settings to adjust to make your alarm clock work properly again.
The main takeaway here is that, usually, your Clock app won't go berserk for any major reason. It usually means you just overlooked a minor setting. Take care of that, and you should be good to go.