- Do Not Disturb doesn’t block alarms on the iPhone. It will block all sorts of notifications and incoming calls, but Alarms will ring with Do Not Disturb enabled.
- Alarms are exempt from Silent Mode, too. If you toggle ON Silent Mode, the alarm will still wake you up.
- Ringer and Alerts volume applies to Alarm, though. So we suggest disabling Change with Buttons so your ringtone, alarm, and notification alerts won’t change if you lower volume with Side Volume Buttons.
- Alarms won’t go off if your iPhone is off.
Does Do Not Disturb stop alarm iPhone?
Do Not Disturb or DND is an incredibly useful feature that blocks notifications and incoming calls from people and apps based on your input. You can find the DND mode in Settings > Focus. Or you can enable it from Control Center (the crescent moon icon).
If you put some time into it whitelisting important people and important apps, you can filter out the rest and make your professional and personal life so much easier. And there are a few more similar modes in different categories on iOS. Like Sleep or Work. You can enable it manually or even schedule it so it will enable automatically at a certain time. It even notifies senders and callers that you’re not available in some apps.
Now, what about Alarms? If DND blocks all notifications and incoming calls, does this applies to alarms, too? No, alarms are beyond the rule of any Focus feature and, if you set your alarm, you can be certain that it will ring. Even with Silent Mode enabled? It will ring, regardless.
What you need to have in mind if you worry about missed alarms are these 4 things:
- Make sure that you set an alarm and that it’s toggled ON. Set a few, just in case. I do have at least 4 for those early morning wake-ups.
- Choose an alarm sound in Clock > Alarms. Anything but None should do the job.
- Watch for the Change with Buttons toggle in Settings > Sound & Haptics. If this is enabled and you lower the volume, these changes will apply to your ringtone, notifications, and alarms, too. If you disable it, Side Buttons will change only the Media volume. Meanwhile, set the volume alarm volume in Settings > Sound & Haptics.
- Keep your iPhone ON. If you power off your device or it shuts down because of a low battery, alarms won’t go off.
- Place your iPhone at a distance so you’ll need to get up to snooze or disable the alarm.
That’s all we have to say about it. Worry not, if you followed these steps, your alarm should go off even with Do Not Disturb and Silent Mode enabled. Thank you for reading and we look forward to hearing from you. Leave your thoughts in the comments section below.
Editor’s note: This article was initially published in June 2022. We made sure to revamp it for freshness and accuracy.
