Unpredictable notifications behavior with Watch/iPhone combo

TidBITS Talk
1

I have two alarms set on my iPhone 13 Pro (18.6.2), one at 3pm and one at 3:15pm. Both repeat daily. I have an Apple Watch 10 on 11.6.2. This afternoon I was sitting on a sofa talking to friends. The phone was in my belt holster. At 3pm, the alarm went off on my phone but not my watch. I had to get the phone to stop it. At 3:15pm, the alarm went off on my watch, where I could stop it. My body had not moved and only hand motions occurred between the two alarms.

I have long noticed the annoyingly unpredictable nature of where alarms pop up, but here was a clear case of where there was no noticeable difference between the environment of two alarms which nonetheless acted in completely different ways.

2

Since I wear my watch all the time, I always set alarms on the watch, and they always go off there. It works every time for me.

But Glenn Fleishman recently posted an article on sixcolors.com talking about syncing watch and iPhone alarms. Perhaps that will help?

3

Thank you, @ddmiller . I reviewed that article. The settings panel he shows is, I assume, from iOS 26, so mine was different. However, my watch does have Push Alerts from iPhone set to ‘on’, as it has since I got this watch last year. No explanation of why pushing alerts from iPhone only happens intermittently. I also checked Take Control of Your Apple Watch by Jeff Carlson. There is nothing in that book about intermittent alerts on the watch.

By the way, on those occasions when an alert does make it to the watch, sometimes the watch gets so excited it notifies me twice. Occasionally even three times.

Sadly, this is what I have come to expect from Apple software.

4

Have you tried calling Apple Support, or going to a support session at a local Apple Store, to see if they can troubleshoot this problem?

Or, have you considered switching all of your alarms to the Apple Watch and not using the phone for alarms at all?

5

@ddmiller I hesitate to go to the Apple store with an intermittent problem. Unless the gods happen to be with me, it probably won’t be reproducible. Same with calling Apple Support - with whom I had an absolutely terrible experience about a year ago.

I didn’t have an Apple Watch until a few years ago, so then I had to respond to alarms on my phone. But using the watch to silence alarms is handy when I’m home and the phone is in another part of the house, for example, or, as happened to me, when I’m interacting with another person and I’d rather just lift my wrist rather than digging out my phone. The interaction with the iPhone is certainly a major reason why I bought the watch.

I’m sorry to have responded to your suggestions with negatives. I very much appreciate that you took the time to think about this and respond.