iPhone users have been urged to check their settings after complaining about sleeping through their alarms.
A TikTok user called Elizabeth uploaded a long video talking through the alleged problem, including showcasing how they'd been having problems recently with sleeping through their alarms.
They said that they're a really deep sleeper, one you could "slap across the face" without waking up, and that recently their alarms had been running really quietly, leading to some embarrassment and late arrivals to work.
Going on, they claim that this is apparently to do with a new feature Apple has implemented, centered around attention awareness.
Advert
This setting is buried in the list of settings associated with Face ID & Passcode, in the main Settings app, apparently.
You can head there and find the setting called "Attention-Aware Features" - the description of which mentions that it might "lower the volume of some alerts".
Elizabeth is pretty enraged by this, alleging that it can "silence your alarm", but the truth might be a little less clear.
While some comments under the TikTok video are praising the tip, one user has pointed out: "Attention awareness lowers the volume of an alarm if it detects that you are looking at your phone".
This is correct according to Apple's own documentation and showcases a bit of a misunderstanding on Elizabeth's part - the Attention-Aware Features won't make an alarm or alert quieter unless the phone is unlocked and detects that you're looking at your display.
So, unless something is going pretty wrong with Elizabeth's own iPhone, it's really unlikely that it would silence an alarm when the phone is on a bedstand or charging next to their bed.
Of course, we can't be certain about what might have happened in the case of their previous alarms that apparently didn't go off, but it's certainly not how the setting is designed to work.
As other users have commented, after all, most people with their alert volume turned up all the way get woken with a bit of a snap each morning. One person said: "can’t relate, I be getting shell shock every morning".
If you want to double-check your alarm volume independent of Elizabeth's feature-tweaking accusations, you can head to Settings and then tap on Sound & Haptics. Here you'll see a slider for Ringtone and Alerts which you can change the volume on.
In fact, you can also edit the volume of your wake-up alarm specifically.
If you've set up a sleep routine using Apple's Sleep settings, you can head to the Clock app and tap "Change" next to your "Wake Up" alarm. Scroll down and you'll see a volume bar that lets you set its volume independent of your phone's overall volume.
You can edit your sleep schedule in the Health app, in case you haven't set that up yet - it's a great way to schedule our your week's rest (and alarms).