The Apple alarm conspiracy

If you’re reading this, you may have overslept.

Embedded is your essential guide to what’s good on the internet, written by Kate Lindsay and edited by Nick Catucci.

If I’m ever late, the government did it! —Kate

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Last week, for the first time since possibly college, I overslept my alarm. I set three every morning in fifteen-minute increments. That, plus the usual anxiety that surges through me whenever my consciousness greets the day, ensures that I’m promptly up and at ‘em. When I slept through my final alarm last week, I was shocked and confused, but attributed it to a heavy walking day the day before. Then I opened TikTok. 

@crunchycelerystickexplain yourself @apple

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“Literally what did Apple do to their alarms,” a user named Britt wrote over a video. “I have never NOT woken up to my alarms. This is the eighth day in a row I’m waking up late.”

The video, posted on the same day I overslept, has over seven million views, and over eight thousand comments from people who had similar experiences. “I’ve literally watched my alarm go off without any sound,” one commenter wrote. “They legit aren’t going off,” another wrote. I searched “iPhone alarm” on the app, and came across a number of similar videos over the past few months. Surely, this couldn’t be a coincidence. 

I started looking into it, seeing if there had been any recent reports in the Apple Support forums about this, or some kind of 2024 bug they’ve acknowledged and were fixing. Nothing