My GF discovered that, when the alarm on her phone goes off (either due to the Alarm function in the Clock app or due the Timer in the Clock app), you can accidentally turn it off and dismiss it if you just swipe up the smallest amount from the bottom of the lock screen.
This is a problem in the morning when she picks it up off the charger and wants to sleep it (but it also bugs her when the Timer goes off and she pulls it out of her pocket but wants to repeat the timer, not stop it, the way she picks it up and flips it around triggers this behavior).
This sounded totally bonkers to me but yup, I was able to easily re-create the issue. On her phone I did it from the Timer from the lock screen (her phone does not have my face in it), and on mine (both on iOS26) I did it via the Timer and also the Alarm. Just the slightest swipe up from the bottom, when the phone is locked but the alarm is going off, will act like a swipe up and theā¦ well the āturn off / sleep / repeat, the alarm is going offā screen will animate up up and away and itās gone (so itās like swiping it to do the force quit thing, or app switching or something).
I didnāt believe it at first and actually used AI/LLM to try to figure it out before realizing that this is actually default behavior on the OS side, not on the Clock/Alarm side of things.
So I know one answer is ājust pick it up differentlyā but habits are hard to overcome (especially if youāre half asleep in the morning)ā¦ do people have ideas? I am not currently under the impression that there is some setting to change (I hope I am wrong). If this is indeed default behavior and canāt be changed, does anyone here work at Apple or knows someone there (likely!), because this at the moment seems like a problem that also flies in the face of the (nice imho) change to the Alarm where you have to swipe to turn it off (they made it more intentional to turn off, whereas a slight swipe up is very unintentional but turns it off ā possibly there was some discussion of this somewhere at the time but if so I missed it and web search didnāt find it).
TYIA! (Yeah I spent like 30 minutes looking through web help, AI/LLM help, and settings before realizing, āI think this is indeed what it is programmed to doā¦.")
My first snarky answer is get up when the alarm goes off, and set it for the time you need to get up and out of bed. Iāve never understood snoozing an alarm - it just means that Iād wake myself up at least 9-ish minutes earlier (if not more for people who multi-snooze) than I need to.
My second snarky answer is buy an inexpensive alarm clock for the bedside rather than use the phone.
I donāt often need alarms, but a third slight-less snarky answer is to use what I use when I do need one - the alarm on the Apple Watch, if she has one. I prefer it so much to the iPhone clock app, as it wakes only me rather than my wife as well (when the watch is set to silent) and it doesnāt have the problem you describe. It does have a snooze function (which is set by defaultā), but Iāve never used it.
Indeed, she is big on snooze, I have tried to convince her of the awesomeness of setting the alarm for when you need it and then actually get up then so you get lots of sleep and arenāt rushed. So far, I have not done well on that front!
Intriguing! When the āswipe to turn off alarmā debuted I thought one had to be fairly precise about the swipe so this is a surprise.
I think the Topic Snark Quotient has been reached so Iāll focus in other directionsā¦
I thought maybe something to do with notifications, since they are also handled with swipe from bottom but I tested variations of those settings to no avail.
Then I remembered the frustration I have in the garden with gloves on, and in the mud, and the iPhone alarm rings while in my pocket. I just grab from the outside with gloves on and the alarm snoozes. I just tested (13 mini, 26.3) and the alarm does go into snooze with a press of side button or volume button.
Depending on the charger, that might or might not work. I use a magnetic charger flat on the night stand so the phone lays on its back, base in my direction, so to snooze I have to reach a tad farther and tap in the middle, but without looking thatās hard to gauge and thereās no audio or haptic feedback to know what youāve done without looking. If your configuration is similar, maybe turning the phone 90 deg so one can feel where the middle is, or some other technique to be able to gauge without looking where the middle of the screen is.
Additionally as a backup, I know people who have set so many alarms they have to scroll to find an appropriate one. So maybe instead of snoozing, set multiple alarms, and swipe up from bottom to turn each off in turn.
Go to Settings > Accessibility > Touch and enable Prefer Single-Touch Actions. This change will make the alarmās stop function a single tap, similar to earlier iOS versions.
I think trying to be precise in the morning wonāt work, but maybe she can grab the phone in a different way some of the time (so, not by the bottom where the swipe up originates).
A man in touch with my own alarm clock. I too have never understood the āset an alarm that I donāt really plan to acknowledgeā approach. But Iāve also learned not to argue with the people (particularly those in the same bed) who do prefer it.
Ha! I am a weird one. Iāve always struggled to wake up, and I hate having an alarm telling me that I have to get up now. So way back in high school I came up with a bizarre system where Iād use multiple alarm clocks (and some that let me set two alarms on the same clock) and Iād have alarms going off at 4 a.m., 5, 6, 6:30, etc. That way I had a warning that the time to really get up was coming. It was amazing to wake up at 4 a.m. and know I still had 2.5 hours before I had to actually get up! Iād go back to sleep with a sigh of relief.
Everyone in my family thought I was nuts!
And yet hereās the bizarre part: my father died when I was 8 months old, so I never knew him. One day I was telling my mom about my alarm clock routine (she was overseas and I was living with my grandparents) and she was shocked. She said, āThatās exactly what your father used to do!ā
I had never heard anyone do this. It was my own idea. I thought. But maybe it was genetic?!
Although I can get out of bed when the alarm goes off, my brain is a bit foggy at that point. Itās more comfortable to let the alarm trigger my wake-up sequence, getting out of bed 20-30 minutes later.
When I was single, Iād let the radio (what I use for my alarm) play and wake up listening to the local news. Today, my wife doesnāt appreciate that, so I turn it off within a couple of seconds, but I still get up 20-30 minutes later.
If I set the alarm 30 minutes later, then I wouldnāt be awake enough to want to get out of bed until 20-30 minutes after that.
This is a little off-topic, but last night, shortly after Iād gone to bed, I was awakened by a vibration from the Apple Watch on my wrist. It was a MyShake alert for an earthquake preliminarily rated at Richter Scale 5.0 about 50 miles from me. It took me a few seconds to realize I should look at my watch, and I had time to note it was a shake alert for a magnitude 5 quake, then I felt a rolling motion. I was able to fall back asleep bout 30 minutes later.
Checking in the morning, it appears that the quake (near Santa Cruz, CA) had been downrated to 4.6 with no serious damage reports.
I managed to do this (the accidental closure of the alarm) at the end of my music lesson yesterday ā I have an alarm set for 5 minutes before the end of the lesson (we are both chatty) and I felt it go off in my pocket, so I grabbed my phone (it is almost always upside down, face down, in my pocket when itās in my pocket, the orientation is important for the accidental closure), and pulled it out of my pocket and looked at it (so I had grabbed it by the bottom and spun it in my hand to get it facing upwards). It was the regular lock screen. There was no more alarm. I had done the thing (somehow closed the alarm without swiping). If I hadnāt known it was the alarm I really would have been wondering what in the world it was (but I think you can only do this with the alarm). This is a small thing. Itās a good problem to have. But Iām an Apple user so I can be persnickety about design and function and I want things to just work, because I believe they can. And Apple just changed the alarm interface so this general thing wouldnāt happen (general, that is, accidentally tapping to easily turn off the alarm without meaning to, but you can still accidentally and easily turn off the alarm without meaning to, and that bugs me). Sort of hilarious, really.
The Apple Watch has introduced the option to cancel the current pop-up (notice, timer expiring, alarm, etc.) with a wrist flick. This is generally convenient, but there are two issues:
Itās easy to flick your wrist accidentally, and thus cancel something you still wanted to be active.
For some screens (e.g., Timer, Phone), there are multiple possible actions, and a wrist flick always cancels. For example, when a timer expires, you can either cancel the timer or restart it. This can be annoying when you are cooking an item that requires cooking one side, then flipping it to finish the other. So, you want to restart the timer, but if itās canceled, you need to start it from scratch.
), but Iāve never used it.
I too have never understood the āset an alarm that I donāt really plan to acknowledgeā approach. But Iāve also learned not to argue with the people (particularly those in the same bed) who do prefer it.