Alarm clock is silent BFU

de0u

A long time ago I noticed a weird phenomenon: sometimes if I set an alarm for the morning and went to sleep, in the morning the alarm would go off at the right time but the sound wasn't the sound I had selected, but instead a brief "Bong" which wasn't a sound I could find (I looked because I kind of liked it).

Eventually I realized that this was related to system updates, as follows: my phone is set to download updates but not to reboot automatically. If early in the evening I had set an alarm, and then later at night received a message about a system update, and restarted my phone to install the update but didn't use it until morning, then the alarm would go off with "Bong" instead of the sound I had selected. I thought that was a charming mysterious glitch related to updates, because then I didn't understand about BFU vs. AFU. Now I think what was happening was that the "Bong" sound was an emergency fallback sound stored in the Clock app to be used BFU.

Recently that no longer works. If I set an alarm and restart the phone, when the alarm goes off it shows the relevant cute animation on the screen but no sound is played.

Does this happen for anybody else? Just set an alarm for three minutes out, restart your phone, don't touch it for two minutes (I realize that might be hard!)... then what happens when the alarm goes off?

matchboxbananasynergy

I just tried it on my Pixel 6. It worked fine for me. Does it consistently not work for you?

On the sound, it's expected for the sound to be different in BFU. Not all of the app's data is available before first boot, so it chooses and uses a default sound, not necessarily what you've picked out.

de0u

matchboxbananasynergy It is consistent. I'm on a 6a, though I wouldn't expect that to matter. Maybe something is odd about my settings? My media volume is around 45%, my call volume is around 20%, my ring/notification volume is 0%, and my alarm volume is 100%. Do Not Disturb is off.

matchboxbananasynergy

de0u You didn't revoke any permissions to the clock app or other system apps, right?

Can you restore the clock app to its defaults by clearing its cache and storage (this will clear saved alarms etc.) and try again?

de0u

matchboxbananasynergy

I reset cache and storage, set an alarm with the default sound, and restarted. That worked. Then I set an alarm using a MIDI file as the sound and restarted. That showed just the animation with no sound. Then I went back to the default alarm, restarted, and that played. Then I set an alarm with the MIDI file, restarted, and unlocked -- that played. So my claim was too strong: it seems to be only non-built-in alarms that don't play BFU. I guess that could make sense, but if there is still fallback code in Clock it doesn't seem to be working.

With respect to permissions, I don't think I have ever revoked anything from Clock. The current state is:

Allowed: Notifications, Sensors
Not allowed: Music and audio, Photos and videos

Is that as it should be?

Murcielago

I had the same problem (alarm muted and only an animation on the screen). Clear cache and storage worked for me, thank you very much. However, I use the standard sound and no MIDI file as described by de0u

Finally I can reduce the timer for my auto reboot - the phone can now reboot automatically at night and I'm still woken up in the morning - perfect!

wokika1772

I'm on pixel 6a, have same settings as OP(reboot after hours of unuse), and have experienced the same issue after recent update. I don't remember if the alarm sound was like "bong", but it was not the one I selected in alarm setting.

de0u

Murcielago Thanks for reporting back!