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Apple watch wake alarm

M

mxrider88

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Mar 8, 2019
832
1,039
Sydney, AU
Hello everyone!
My partner got an Apple Watch series 10 and she was keen on trying sleep tracking and so on.
She went to bed with the wake alarm set as usual and the watch on.
The phone didn’t sound the alarm, the watch only vibrated, which didn’t wake her up, she missed her gym class.

I spent an hour trying to figure out how to get the phone to play the wake alarm and it seems like there is no way to get that to work.

Did someone find a workaround for this?

Whoever at Apple is in charge of this sleep tracking thing should be fired on the spot. This is absolutely ridiculous.

You can’t wear the watch and have the phone waking you up. You also can’t have the watch play the alarm loud unless it is not in silent mode, which means you have to remember to take it off silent mode every night before bed and put it back in silent mode when you wake up, since having a watch making sounds makes you look ridiculous.


Thanks for helping!
 
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If you do sleep tracking, you set the wake up there.

Set the wake up alarm under Health -> Sleep -> Sleep Schedule. That starts as haptic then adds sound, watch and phone.

It works well when you use Sleep Tracking correctly, and the instructions are pretty clear.

Track your sleep on Apple Watch and use Sleep on iPhone - Apple Support

Create personalized sleep schedules to help meet your sleep goals and improve your overall health.
support.apple.com support.apple.com
 
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deeddawg said:
If you do sleep tracking, you set the wake up there.

Set the wake up alarm under Health -> Sleep -> Sleep Schedule. That starts as haptic then adds sound

it works well when you use Sleep Tracking correctly, and the instructions are pretty clear.

Track your sleep on Apple Watch and use Sleep on iPhone - Apple Support

Create personalized sleep schedules to help meet your sleep goals and improve your overall health.
support.apple.com support.apple.com
Click to expand...
The sound didn’t start for her, it was setup correctly from the sleep schedule app but it only gave a vibration and she didn’t wake up with that.
Maybe a glitch then?


Is there a way to get it to sound the alarm on the phone as if you were not wearing the watch?

Thanks
 
mxrider88 said:
Whoever at Apple is in charge of this sleep tracking thing should be fired on the spot. This is absolutely ridiculous.

You can’t wear the watch and have the phone waking you up. You also can’t have the watch play the alarm loud unless it is not in silent mode, which means you have to remember to take it off silent mode every night before bed and put it back in silent mode when you wake up, since having a watch making sounds makes you look ridiculous.


Thanks for helping!
Click to expand...


I suspect this is your issue -- if she doesn't want the watch to be silent, don't put it in silent mode. I only use silent mode in certain circumstances, but I don't share the same concerns about what other people might think of me for using a smart watch and it's capabilities (or for much else either).

As for why the watch silent mode would prevent the phone wakeup? Not sure. You may need to do some testing.

Meanwhile, until you've been able to better test the details of turning on silent mode but not really wanting things to be silent, perhaps set a phone alarm for after the sleep mode wakeup.

I can tell you that scheduled Do Not Disturb doesn't seem to have any poor interactions with Sleep mode. My scheduled DND timeframe is broader than my sleep timeframes and my alarm works great.
 
I think we are a bit in a “you are holding it wrong” situation here.

Alarms are meant to be alarms, have a sound. An alarm shouldn’t be silenced if the phone is on silence mode, or watch in this case.

Setting up a separate alarm on the phone could work yes, but the wake alarm is waking you up gently by getting increasingly louder, plus it has a nice tone.
Every other alarm sound on the iPhone is extremely irritating and it plays super loud from the beginning. That works for a cooking timer, not for waking up.

I don’t understand why there is no option to set the sleeping schedule but have the phone as alarm instead of the watch and let the watch just do its sleep tracking thing.

I can’t understand how a 3 trillion dollar company can’t have one person thinking this things through..
happy it works for you though, but by reading on reddit and other blogs it seems to me that I’m not the only one with this “issue”..
 
You can do just what you want - have the watch track sleep and use the phone as an alarm. The new watch OS will automatically track your sleep (if you turn that feature on), without you having to set up a sleep schedule or enabling sleep focus. All you really need to do is turn on sleep tracking and then wear the watch to bed. No need to set an alarm on the watch if what you want is an alarm on the phone. Just wear the watch to bed (for sleep tracking) and set an alarm on the phone.

FWIW, I prefer to have the alarm silent on my watch. The vibrations wake me up without waking up my husband (as the audio alarm does). So I'd be unhappy if Apple took that choice away from me. I understand why you might want an audio alarm even though the watch is in silent mode, but I don't think that should be the default. Perhaps a setting is what is needed.
 
tamara6 said:
You can do just what you want - have the watch track sleep and use the phone as an alarm. The new watch OS will automatically track your sleep (if you turn that feature on), without you having to set up a sleep schedule or enabling sleep focus. All you really need to do is turn on sleep tracking and then wear the watch to bed. No need to set an alarm on the watch if what you want is an alarm on the phone. Just wear the watch to bed (for sleep tracking) and set an alarm on the phone.

FWIW, I prefer to have the alarm silent on my watch. The vibrations wake me up without waking up my husband (as the audio alarm does). So I'd be unhappy if Apple took that choice away from me. I understand why you might want an audio alarm even though the watch is in silent mode, but I don't think that should be the default. Perhaps a setting is what is needed.
Click to expand...
This is not my experience, we had set the sleeping schedule, but when the time for the alarm came, the phone didn’t play the alarm because she was wearing the watch. The watch was on silence mode and just gave the haptic on the wrist, without sound. She didn’t wake up.

She will end up leaving the watch on charge overnight as usual so the phone gives the alarm, but that’s not why she bought the watch, she wanted the tracking features.
 
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Try not setting a sleep schedule - just turning on sleep tracking. And setting a regular alarm on the phone - which will also vibrate the watch, but should have an audible alarm sound from the phone. (by regular alarm, I mean not a wake-up alarm)
 
Set up your sleep focus to only let those items through that you want. Set it to update across all devices. Then at bedtime, set the watch on sleep instead of silent and it’ll work just fine. I do this every night.
 
kissfan said:
Set up your sleep focus to only let those items through that you want. Set it to update across all devices. Then at bedtime, set the watch on sleep instead of silent and it’ll work just fine. I do this every night.
Click to expand...
I might give this a try, but it’s not automated, it defeats the purpose really. But I guess that’s the best apple can do with their engineers.

I’d simply add a toggle on the phone to let the wake alarm play on the phone. And problem solved.
 
tamara6 said:
Try not setting a sleep schedule - just turning on sleep tracking. And setting a regular alarm on the phone - which will also vibrate the watch, but should have an audible alarm sound from the phone. (by regular alarm, I mean not a wake-up alarm)
Click to expand...
This will work but the alarms are horrible and start super loud, the wake alarm you set on the sleep focus is nicer and gradually increases the value.. that’s my point..
 
tamara6 said:
FWIW, I prefer to have the alarm silent on my watch. The vibrations wake me up without waking up my husband (as the audio alarm does). So I'd be unhappy if Apple took that choice away from me. I understand why you might want an audio alarm even though the watch is in silent mode, but I don't think that should be the default. Perhaps a setting is what is needed.
Click to expand...
I'd be absolutely livid if Apple took away the option for the alarm to be silent/haptic only. The haptics never fail to wake me up and I don't want it making noise and waking my wife up also.

I understand it's different on the phone, where the alarm sounds regardless of whether you have your phone silenced or not, but I wouldn't want it that way on the watch.
 
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azhava said:
I'd be absolutely livid if Apple took away the option for the alarm to be silent/haptic only. The haptics never fail to wake me up and I don't want it making noise and waking my wife up also.

I understand it's different on the phone, where the alarm sounds regardless of whether you have your phone silenced or not, but I wouldn't want it that way on the watch.
Click to expand...

they should add a toggle. It’s not rocket science really.
We have options to customise useless emojis, colours on icons and so forth and on basic important things, zero. It’s a complete nonsense
 
While I do think it is too bad that the watch doesn't work the way you want it to, its not like you don't have options that really aren't that bad.
1. do sleep tracking and setting of alarm outside of sleep focus or a sleep schedule
or
2. just toggle the sound on and off on the watch before going to bed and after waking up.

Actually, I'm not sure why #2 is such a non-starter. Every night I set an alarm on my watch for whatever time I want to wake up (typically not the same each day). It takes a couple of seconds, but at least I'm sure I've got an alarm set. Before using the watch as an alarm I had to remember to flip the switch on my alarm clock (or else it wouldn't go off in the morning) and then, of course, flip it back in the morning to turn the alarm off. It becomes second nature and really isn't a big deal.

I think you are wanting something that works automagically, without having to set a switch or whatever every night. But is it really so bad if you *do* have to set a switch? It doesn't take that long. And if you forget to silence the watch in the morning - no biggie. With the first little "ding" - just silence it then. It's not like you are doomed to go through the whole day with a noisy watch. And, who knows, maybe that automation trick would work?

Again, I get wanting to be upset that Apple isn't perfectly in tune with what you want. But its not like there aren't reasonable alternatives.
 
I’m just asking why the phone can’t sound the alarm set in the sleep schedule (the gentle alarm that gets slowly louder), if I’m wearing the Apple Watch to track the sleep and all the other stuff that it tracks.

It needs one toggle. But we have instead a million other customisations to copy android now on iOS 18.

Yes you can set alarms outside of the sleep schedule alarm, but the sound is horrible and the volume is always unpredictable, most of the time blasting, unless you remember to adjust that too.
It’s such a nonsense.

If I set the wake alarm on the sleep schedule it plays nicely and wakes you slowly. But it just doesn’t work if you wear the watch. All you get is the watch to vibrate, or play sound if you remember to un-silence it, hoping you don’t have the arm under the pillow otherwise you go to work at lunch time!
 
I do think having the option to have the phone alarm ring, the watch haptic vibrations go off, or even have them both, is a good idea. Perhaps if enough people left feedback, Apple will catch on.
www.apple.com

Product Feedback

We would love to hear your comments about any of our hardware and software products. Send us your thoughts.
www.apple.com
 
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I sent the feedback, but like many I sent before, I'm pretty confident it will go unnoticed. Or in 6 years they will call it "revolutionary new feature"
 
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