Many Android mobile users have found that the Google clock no longer sounds the scheduled alarms, leaving them stranded at the worst moment.
The most common case is that of users who have fallen asleep, because their phone has not rung, but it also occurs with any type of alarm at any time. Interestingly, the app seems to work, it’s just that the alarm tones don’t sound, even if we put the default or if we use a custom one. Sometimes it vibrates only once, but does not ring.
Those who have noticed have noticed that the app does not notify that the alarm is going to sound; a functionality that allows us to deactivate it before it sounds, but now it doesn’t even appear. The Play Store has been filled with complaints from users, who have given a star to the one that seems to be the culprit; many tell how they have woken up late, and even one user claims to have lost work due to being late.
The really weird thing is that this seems to be a new problem; most of the negative testimonials are from this week, which seems to indicate that it is the result of a recent update. But already in June there were some users who reported similar behavior, just after updating the Google Assistant; therefore, the strongest theory at the moment is that there is some kind of incompatibility or conflict with the Clock app.
As pointed out in , it is difficult to reproduce this bug on purpose, even if you follow the same steps as someone who has suffered from it. It doesn’t seem to matter which brand of mobile we use either, as there have been complaints from users of , , , and many more. So it may well depend on some configuration option or even the geographic location of the user.
At the moment, Google has not made any public statement in this regard. Without knowing exactly what is causing the problem, it is impossible to do anything to mitigate it; the only options we have is to use another alarm app, or another device such as a smartwatch.
We might think that an alarm is the easiest thing in the world to program: when the clock strikes the time, it plays a sound, that’s it. But even alarms are complicated today, capable of connecting to the Internet and our account through personal assistants and other apps. It seems that this complication is what has caused one of the most basic functions of a phone to stop working.