two/multiple watches and bugs in wake alarm on watchos10/ios17

[joeblough]

has anyone else had a problem with the watch you wear to track sleep not alarming in the morning after ios17/watchos10?

i had everything working fine with two S7s under ios16/watchos9. both watches were set to track sleep and the watch i wear to bed would definitely wake me up every morning with haptics. the other watch would also alarm (on the charger) but it's not clear if it made noise because it was always in a different room. i set both to track sleep just so in case i had to switch watches before bed i didn't have to remember to enable sleep.

after ios17/watchos10, the watch i wear to sleep stopped giving haptics. it shows the alarm time at the bottom of its sleep screen, but when the alarm goes off now the phone starts making noise and the watch just drops out of sleep mode without any alarm, haptic or otherwise.

it turns out the other watch is alarming (in the other room, on the charger). when i switched to sleeping with that watch, everything worked as expected.

thinking this was some kind of bug with the watch i normally wear to bed, i unpaired it and re-paired it but the problem persists. i did restore the watch from a backup which may have been a mistake.

anyone else seen this? got a solution?

 

[joeblough]

well, i unpaired the watch again and this time restored it from a backup of my other watch. although i did turn off the watch i was not wearing, this seems to have fixed the problem with the watch i use for sleep. i will try with the other watch on and then on and "used for sleep" to see if the problem comes back with the sleep watch.

 

[joeblough]

lol that lasted a day. this morning, despite the 2nd watch being powered off, the haptic alarm did not activate on my wrist - instead the iphone made a bunch of noise again.

i had added back all my credit cards to the watch yesterday, but hard to know if that is related.

i guess this is just some kind of ios17/watchos10 bug.

 

[joeblough]

all this might be because i've been running Pillow, which runs in the foreground all night. i noticed that if i wake up and quit pillow before the alarm time, the watch alarm goes off properly with haptics. when pillow is running, i think iOS thinks the phone is being actively used and so it puts the alarm on the iPhone. in general this is what happens with the apple watch - if a notification comes in when you are looking at the phone, it doesn't appear on the watch.

 

[mpaquette]

I had a similar issue. 2 watches, both set to track sleep, but both sound at wake up alarm. I turned off track sleep on one and only use the other for sleep.

 

[joeblough]

I had a similar issue. 2 watches, both set to track sleep, but both sound at wake up alarm. I turned off track sleep on one and only use the other for sleep.

this might make sense as they want to be very conservative and not have people miss their wake-up alarms. for my part when i had both watches set to track sleep, i had the other watch on a charger in a different room, so i don't know if it was actually making noise. when i'd go to take it off the charger i'd see that the "wake up alarm" screen was on the watch.

anyway i think my problem is sorted. i guess i can just set the alarm in pillow if i need it.

 

[coffeemadmanUK]

I had this issue with just one Watch, alarm set on iPhone usually wakes me with haptics first and only sounds if I don't get woken and turn the alarm off via the Watch.

Updated and now the phone alarm goes off and the Watch doesn't even vibrate.

 

[adam1080]

Hmmm. my annoyance occurs with my S7 Titanium and my Ultra 2. if you change the Sleep Alarm on your phone, it only applies to the watch you are wearing and the other stays at the original/default alarm time.

Not a fan of that if you want to sleep in and the other watch still has a charge. It goes off too early, not cool.

 

[joeblough]

yeah to simplify things i turned off sleep on my daytime watch. it used to all work fine with both turned on but somehow after watchos10 i’ve had to rejigger everything.

 

[RSmith2023]

all this might be because i've been running Pillow, which runs in the foreground all night. i noticed that if i wake up and quit pillow before the alarm time, the watch alarm goes off properly with haptics. when pillow is running, i think iOS thinks the phone is being actively used and so it puts the alarm on the iPhone. in general this is what happens with the apple watch - if a notification comes in when you are looking at the phone, it doesn't appear on the watch.

Was having the same issue with alarms not working on my Ultra and this got me thinking. I have been using a Intermittent Fasting app for a few months but only recently installed it to my watch (so I can end and start tracking the fasting periods) and thinking back, that is about when the alarm issue started.

So I removed it from my watch and tested by setting an alarm on my phone and it worked! (Same test failed earlier)

So, obviously there are some apps that interfere with alarms syncing properly.