Turning off Sleep Focus no longer turns off alarm on my Apple Watch

For a long time I have been using a Settings "Sleep Focus" tied to a Health "Sleep Schedule" and I use my Apple Watch (currently a Series 10) to track my sleep. It used to be that when I awoke before my 8:00am alarm (I usually do), I could tap the focus button in the Watch's control center and turn off the Sleep Focus, and then I'd get a "Good Morning" screen on the Watch, AND my 8:00am alarm would be turned off for that day.


At some point recently (in the last few months?) this no longer works. If I wake before 8:00am I can tap the focus button on the watch, and the icon changes color as though it is turning the Sleep Focus off, but it doesn't show the "Good Morning" screen anymore and the alarm still goes off at 8:00am. (I think, but am not 100% certain, that when I turn off the alarm at 8:00am, THEN I still get the "Good Morning" screen.)


Does anybody have any ideas on why this changed, or how to set it back to the way it was before? Thanks!


I just deleted the existing Sleep Focus & Schedule, and re-created them, so I should know by tomorrow morning if that changes anything.


iPhone 15, iOS 18.4.1

Watch Series 10, WatchOS 11.4 (22T251)

(Also a recently purchased MacBook Air (M4 2025), MacOS Sequoia 15.4.1, but I think the Watch problem above started before I got this Mac)




[Re-Titled by Moderator]

Apple Watch Series 10, watchOS 11

Posted on May 13, 2025 5:07 PM

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May 21, 2025 5:33 PM in response to smithchuck

I’ve noticed something similar since around iOS 17.5 / watchOS 10.5, and it seems like Apple quietly changed how Sleep Focus and alarms interact. What you described—the ability to cancel your alarm by manually turning off Sleep Focus—used to work, but lately the system seems to treat the sleep schedule and the focus as separate layers that don’t "dismiss" the alarm anymore.


Some things you could try/check:


  1. In the Clock app on iPhone, go to the Sleep | Wake Up Alarm under the Alarm tab and make sure it’s tied directly to the Sleep Schedule. Sometimes recreating the schedule disconnects it.
  2. In the Health app, double-check under Browse > Sleep > Full Schedule & Options that “Use Schedule for Sleep Focus” is toggled on.
  3. In Watch settings > Focus, see if “Mirror my iPhone” is still enabled (it sometimes gets flipped during major updates).

You're right that the “Good Morning” screen only seems to appear after dismissing the alarm now—almost like it’s treating the wake-up alarm as the final cue instead of the focus status.


Would love to know if re-creating your setup fixed it. If not, might be worth submitting feedback—this seems like one of those “it worked better before” things Apple could easily fix if enough people flag it.

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May 14, 2025 1:43 PM in response to IdrisSeabright

I'm pretty sure I remember seeing that behavior in the past as well. I think what happened most often was my turning off Sleep Focus on my Watch before I got out of bed. If I remember (a big if since I'm groggy in the morning) I'll try that method--just start moving around and see.


I've done the iOS 18.5 & WatchOS 11.5 updates this morning so we'll see if that changes anything tomorrow.


And yesterday I also tried restarting my watch & my phone (after deleting the existing Sleep Focus & turning off the existing Sleep Schedule; I recreated them after the restart), but that also didn't change anything yet.

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May 15, 2025 9:43 AM in response to smithchuck

By the way, I've only found one thread here that seems to report the same behavior, and it was happening for them back in January 2024. (I think mine changed more recently than that, but maybe there's some sequence of events that produces this bug, and I didn't happen to hit it until later.)


Turning Off Sleep Focus on Apple Watch Do… - Apple Community


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May 15, 2025 9:27 AM in response to smithchuck

So this morning I figured I had one of two troubleshooting techniques to try: 1) just start moving around to see if the Watch would prompt me to turn off Sleep Focus, or 2) try turning off Sleep Focus on my phone instead of, as I usually do, on my Watch's Control Center.


I opted for #2 and it behaved in a way like my Watch *used* to do: I got a pop-up window on my phone saying "Turn Off Alarm? It looks like you're awake. Would you like to turn off your alarm?" As soon as I chose "Turn Off," I got a blue "Good Morning" screen on my Watch face (and my alarm didn't go off at the scheduled time).


If I can't figure out a way to get back to having this work from my Watch, this will be an acceptable workaround. But because I'm obsessive, I now see two troubleshooting techniques to try tomorrow:


1) start moving around to see if the Watch would prompt me to turn off Sleep Focus [giving me another way to accomplish the desired result], or 2) try turning off Sleep Focus through my Watch's Control Center, to see if by chance the latest updates restored the old desired behavior.


Stay tuned.



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May 16, 2025 4:53 PM in response to smithchuck

Today: I once again awoke before my Sleep Focus + alarm schedule, so I tried going back to my customary behavior of turning off the Sleep Focus on my Watch (for the first time since the latest OS updates). And it did what I'd prefer it not to do: it turned off Sleep Focus (which I also verified on my iPhone), but it did NOT stop the alarm. The alarm went off at 8:00, and when I stopped it, I got the blue "Good Morning" screen on my Watch (also at 8:00 am, as you can see from the screenshot).



I thought of a new thing to try: just now I deleted the use of custom watch faces in the Sleep Focus Schedule, thinking that may have interfered somehow. The only other thing I can think of to try is what I mentioned before: just get up & move around and see if that triggers it to stop the Sleep Focus & turn off the alarm.


To be continued...

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May 17, 2025 3:21 PM in response to smithchuck

May 17: deleting custom watch screens in Settings > Focus > Sleep didn't change anything. I awoke before my alarm (I have frequent insomnia), went back to turning off the Sleep Focus on my watch. The Focus turned off, but the alarm still went off at 8:00am and that's when the blue "Good Morning" screen appeared on the Watch.


The only thing I can think of left to try is to just get up & move around and see if that triggers it to stop the Sleep Focus & turn off the alarm. If that doesn't work, I believe I can do what I discovered a couple of days ago to get the behavior I want (having the alarm turn off when I turn off my Sleep Focus): turn off the Sleep Focus on my phone, and not on my Watch (which used to work).


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May 18, 2025 10:46 AM in response to smithchuck

5/18/25:

I awoke around 6:55, unplugged & picked up my phone and before I could even get up it prompted me on the phone to turn off my alarm because it looked like I was awake. That turned off Sleep Focus and the alarm, and I immediately got the blue “Good Morning” screen on my Watch.


So it’s looking like the behavior I want is now only controlled at the iPhone, and no longer at the Watch. I think this will be the end of my experiments, unless I think of something else or some other behavior shows up.


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May 19, 2025 10:27 AM in response to smithchuck

(I thought I already posted this reply but can't see it so apologies if this is a duplicate.)


5/19/25:

I realized yesterday I hadn’t tried the “just get up & move around” option. Today I awoke around 6:02 (per Apple) and this time I didn’t touch my phone (plugged in beside my bed) or try to turn off Sleep Focus on my Watch. I just got up and started moving around, getting dressed, etc. At 6:24 nothing had happened so I unplugged my phone and was interacting with it, taking some screenshots to document what’s going on, etc. It still didn’t prompt me to turn off my alarm, and the Sleep Focus icon was still present, but the Health app showed that sleep tracking had ended at 6:02. Finally at 6:28 I manually turned off Sleep Focus on the phone, which got me the “Turn Off Alarm?” prompt and then the “Good Morning” screen on the Watch (and no alarm at 8:00).


After the message here from @IdrisSeabright I checked some settings in the iPhone’s Health & Watch apps. I also noticed that in Watch (iPhone app; "My Watch" tab) > Health > Notification Settings, it was set to “Custom” and “Notifications Off.” I changed that to “Mirror my iPhone.”


We’ll see if that changes anything tomorrow.


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May 21, 2025 6:07 PM in response to Aid_hug

Thanks for the tips! It looks like the three items you highlighted are already as you suggested (see below). I believe I already deleted & recreated the Sleep Focus (my personal notes have that as one of the first things I tried on 5/13/25), and so far I still can't get back to the old & preferred behavior. Unless you meant for me to delete & recreate something else. I don't think I deleted and recreated the "Sleep Schedule," as I only have one, so I think my only option (with the one schedule) was to turn it off then turn it back on again.



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May 14, 2025 8:44 AM in response to WheelieNick

Thanks. I wasn't aware of those updates (hadn't seen any notifications yet). This morning the behavior continued (turned off Sleep Focus early on Watch, alarm still went off at 8:00am). I just updated the WatchOS and I'm in the process of updating the phone's iOS.


However, I'm not hopeful because I'm pretty sure this behavior started before I updated to iOS 18.x. We'll see.

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May 14, 2025 12:13 PM in response to smithchuck

I haven't noticed that behavior. Generally, if I wake up before the alarm and start moving around, the watch will ask me if I want to turn the alarm off. It then behaves as if I turned the alarm off at the appointed time.


It's possible that, even if it's a glitch that started before the last update that the update process and the resulting restarting will resolve it.

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May 19, 2025 1:40 PM in response to smithchuck

smithchuck wrote:

😁 I sometimes suspect that I'm a little OCD. And I used to work in tech support for many years (long ago), and my attitude is that I hate to let the computers win.

For me, it sometimes comes down to I could live with the problem or I could throw the device out the front door onto the concrete sidewalk. I'm not rich enough to do the latter!

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May 20, 2025 10:21 AM in response to smithchuck

5/20/25:

Well, my latest change (changing the Watch Notification Settings to “Mirror my iPhone”) didn’t seem to do anything different. Today I awoke early again and did what I’d done for a long time: turned off the Sleep Focus on my Watch in the Control Center. Focus turned off, but I saw no evidence that the alarm had been stopped. Today I did something a little different and used Siri (which I rarely use) on my phone and told it to turn off today’s alarm, which it did very simply. I went in to check the Sleep Schedule and the alarm had been turned off for today’s schedule, but not for the full schedule. Oddly, at 8:03 I noticed that my Watch still popped up with the blue “Good Morning” screen.


To sum up, I’ve been unable to figure out why turning off Sleep Focus from my Watch’s Control Center no longer works the way it did for months (if not longer): turning off the focus, prompting me on the Watch to turn off my alarm, and then displaying the blue “Good Morning” screen right then. The closest solution I’ve found so far is to turn off Sleep Focus on my iPhone now.

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Turning off Sleep Focus no longer turns off alarm on my Apple Watch

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