ALARM! Spoken Before the Alarm Sound

By Kevin Shaw, 9 July, 2024

Forum
iOS and iPadOS

I used the Health app to set up my sleep schedule.
Before the alarm goes off, VoiceOver will yell out the word "ALARM!" which can be quite jarring especially for alarm sounds that start soft and get louder.

Does anyone know how to not get VoiceOver to speak before the alarm sound goes off?

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Comments

By Mlth on Monday, July 8, 2024 - 21:07

I run into the same issue. Unfortunately, the only method I found is to mute VoiceOver speech before bed with a 3-finger double tap.

By Brian on Monday, July 8, 2024 - 21:07

No guarantee, but try the following?:

1. Open Notifications from Settings.
2. Tap on Health.
3. Uncheck 'Allow on Lockscreen'. Alternatively, uncheck Allow Banner' as well.
4. If all goes well, you should not hear anything but the alarm ringtone.

Note, this is not a fix, as doing this method will pretty much silence the spoken output of, all, notifications regarding the Health app.

HTH. 🤷

By LBM on Monday, July 8, 2024 - 21:07

One possible solution for an overnight alarm is to use shortcuts to turn VoiceOver off at, say, 4 am. And then create another shortcut that turns VoiceOver back on once you wake up alarm, or any other alarm, is cleared. It can be useful to create a third shortcut that turned VoiceOver back on when you disconnect your phone from the charger. This means that if you take your phone off the charger before your alarm goes off, then VoiceOver will be activated then as well. A consequence of this is of course that VoiceOver will not then read out any notifications that you receive after 4 am before your alarm goes off, but I suspect you wouldn’t want those notifications anyway.
It is a bit of a clunky workaround I will admit, and only works for the first alarm in the morning. But it might be worth giving a try.