message alert problems on lock screen

By Jason, 4 April, 2021

Forum
iOS and iPadOS

For some strange reason, my IPhone 6S+ has decided that when I get a new text message and either I've pushed the power button or it's dropped into autolock because of no activity after a couple minutes, it's not going to bother waking up and alert me or play a sound. Yet if I press the power button to bring up the lock screen, there's the notification of new messages however many minutes ago they were received. Any suggestions on how to fix this problem? Thanks in advance!

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Comments

By Tanya Harrison on Sunday, April 25, 2021 - 13:14

Are you using the latest version of iOS? I am, and have encountered the same issue on my iPhone 11.

By Jason on Sunday, April 25, 2021 - 13:14

I am yes, and it was around the time I installed the latest that I noticed this behavior. I had been doing a little turning off of notifications for settings I don't use, background refresh, etc., but I touched nothing to do with messages since I use those regularly, so thought maybe I'd screwed up a setting or something and haven't yet been able to discover it. Disturbing to know it might not be anything I did but a bug,

By Jo Billard on Sunday, April 25, 2021 - 13:14

I haven't had this problem, but what is happening is that I get notifications but some of them don't have alert sounds anymore.

By peter on Sunday, April 25, 2021 - 13:14

Somehow for me the experience is very different. I am using iOS 14.4.2 with an iPhone XR.

In the past, with the phone locked, I would simply get an audio notification like a chime when a new text or notification appeared.

A few weeks ago, however, when I receive such notifications with the phone locked, not only do I receive the audio notification, but Voiceover also starts to speak the mesage. I don't think it used to work that way. Funny hearing the phone speak from within my pocket!

--Pete

If you go to settings -> accessibility -> Voice Over there’s an option to always speak notifications. That might have gotten toggled on somehow.

By Jeff on Sunday, April 25, 2021 - 13:14

I experience the problem where a message will come in, but the alert sound is silent and Voiceover does not read the message as it's supposed to do (and usually does). But this problem doesn't always occur. In fact, it's probably quite a bit less than 50% of the messages that I receive. It's random with no pattern that I can determine. It's almost like the phone doesn't wake up like it should to alert and read the message. I have an iPhone 8 and this has been happening for as far back as I can remember. I'm pretty sure it was happening in previous versions of iOS.

That's interesting that you mention that, because that would happen to me too since I got this phone, but only if say somebody sent me like 5 messages in a real quick short period of time, I'd only get the sound and VoiceOver announcement for the first message but not the rapid subsequent. But I'm just not getting them at all anymore, a friend had sent a time-sensitive message and I didn't notice for an hour because no alert whatsoever until I had reason to check my phone and there was the notification. Definitely odd!