When I first got my Apple Watch, I loved the fact that my morning alarm tapped the watch and did not ring on the phone; same for my wife, meaning that our alarms did not wake each other.
But starting maybe a month ago, the alarm sounds on the phone, even though the phone is in Sleep Focus (at least, it was when I went to sleep). Ugh. I can’t seem to find a setting to fix that. I suppose I could set the silent switch every night but I didn’t have to do that before.
Please can you clarify, are you setting an alarm in the alarm “app” (and if so, on which device?) or are you using the Wake Up function in the Sleep section of Apple Health? Your answer will help troubleshoot.
I think you are on to something. I’ve always set my wakeup alarm on my phone and it rings on both my phone and watch. So the behavior the OP sees is “normal” for me.
ME TOO!
Ya this seems to come and go and I honestly can’t figure it out either. I use the sleep schedule alarm and I know there’s a difference between that and a ‘regular’ alarm in the Alarm app.
I can look it up later, but there was a help article from Apple about using or not using Nightstand Mode on the watch that enables or disables the alarm sound on the phone I think it was.
As you can tell, it is all a bit confusing, I think Apple should just include a “alarm goes off on both devices” toggle for all alarms and Sleep Schedules.
Good question, I should have specified. It’s using the Sleep Schedule, which I set using Sleep Schedule but I often manually modify on a one-time basis.
Since posting my question, guess what? The alarm has gone back to silent (that is, watch vibrates and the phone is silent). Wondering now if my occasional manual overrides are related. I don’t think so, because this morning I did not override, and I was up when the alarm time came and it worked correctly (that is, silently).
A frustrating aspect is that unlike most computer problems, I can’t test and troubleshoot because as far as I can tell, a Sleep Schedule alarm cannot be set for, say, two minutes from now. It can only set to tomorrow.
Me and my big mouth. Having said that, this morning, the phone sounded (and the watch tapped). No idea what changed. When I looked, Sleep Focus was off but I assume that was automatic when I dismissed the alarm using the watch. Not sure but am wondering if Sleep Focus is somehow related.
My watch/phone usually work as expected (the phone does not sound when the watch taps). Although, there has been a few times where it did not work properly (both the phone sounded and the watch tapped). I have never worked out why as it is rather infrequent for me (once every few months at most). And I always configure the sleep schedule on my phone, so that’s not the issue.
One thing I have noticed is that a few times the phone sounded because the watch was locked and/or not on my wrist. But then the watch didn’t tap, which is the correct behavior for that situation.
I bring up the locked watch scenario because it makes me think that perhaps the issue is that the phone and watch are not able to communicate correctly. Therefore, each device assumes it is the only device available to “sound the alarm.” I suppose it is better to error by setting off two alarms than no alarms.