This iPhone hack will make sure you never miss your morning alarm again

There are two kinds of people in this world: those who have a single iPhone alarm clock, and those who have half a dozen of them spaced within minutes of each other. I’m definitely in the second category. Also, there are two other kinds of people in the world: those who wake up after their first alarm and those who hit snooze. Again, I’m in the second group.

I’m a morning person, however, even if that means using a few naps to get there. However, I can be a night owl from time to time. In this case, I risk completely turning off the iPhone alarm clock in the morning. It’s happened in the past, so I saved the backup alarms.

But I recently discovered a trick to make sure I never miss my morning alarm again, even if I turn it off instead of snoozing. It works and is very easy to set up.

I told you recently that I’ve been playing around with the Shortcuts app more, focusing on the automation feature. This is how I found a way to prevent the iPhone Low Power Mode from turning off. And that’s where this iPhone alarm trick comes from.

I wanted to make sure my alarm went off in the morning as a backup for my alarm clock. I can always set up backups manually the night before, but what if I forget? So what if I snooze the alarm the next morning instead of hitting the snooze button?

Here’s the simple iPhone automation I created so that the iPhone sets another alarm in case it goes off the alarm in the morning.

• Go to Shortcuts app
• Touch Automation and then the + sign
• Faucet Select Personal Automation
• Touch Alarm
• To select It’s stopped AND Wake up

• Hit Next
• Faucet Add action and tap Create alarm
• Customize time for Create an alarm for (You can give it a name if you want)

• Click the Blue Arrow next to the name “Alarm clock” and select the Never button to choose which days of the week to run this automation

• Faucet Next
• Deactivate Ask before you run and tap Done

That’s all. Let’s say you have an alarm clock at 7:20 like me and you turn it off in the morning. The automation will create another one for 7:45am, giving you plenty of time to snooze if you turn off your alarm. It won’t do anything if you snooze the alarm.

The automation will work even if you wake up on time and turn off your alarm because you obviously turned it off. You will have to deactivate it manually.

It’s imperative that you create an alarm in the iPhone’s Clock app to ensure the above automation works.

Also, your alarm clock menu will be flooded with mimic alarms from automation. Just delete them once in a while. They will be deactivated anyway.

Another alarming thing

This iPhone alarm automation only scratches the surface. You can use similar tricks for other alarms. Another option is to set multiple additional alarms to go off when you go off your alarm. Or create morning automations that also play music on your iPhone or other devices and/or turn on the lights or raise the window blinds—anything to get you out of bed.

But what I’m really looking for is a way to avoid accidentally sleeping through an alarm ever again. And this iPhone automation works for me.

If you need more complex systems for getting up in the morning, you might want to revisit your sleep schedule first and start there.

There is an alarm problem that the automation cannot solve. Never ever disable the alarm clock on your iPhone. If you do, this automation won’t save you.

But can’t we set up an iPhone automation that sets an alarm by itself? Funny you should ask. YES. Yes we can.

Follow the above steps, but instead of Alarmchoose Time. I set 7:00. You will then create an alarm for 7:46am. And this is all. What the alarm clock will do is set an alarm at 7:46 every morning at 7:00.

With these two automations in place, you should wake up around 7:45am at the latest. That 7:46 timestamp is not an error. I would set it up this way to distinguish between automations.