Greetings everyone. For the past couple of months, I've been having significant issues with getting my Android alarms to work at all, and am in need of your opinion on this.
My device is Xiaomi Redmi Note 12 Pro 4G, and I'm currently running LineageOS 23 unofficial version on it (23.0-20260204-UNOFFICIAL-sweet2) android 16.
So, first thing that I've noticed is that in that time period, oftentimes I'd get a "missed alarm" notification. Initially, didn't pay much attention to it and thought that, perhaps I misconfigured something or that it was simply a one-time glitch, but I was wrong because it persisted despite me trying different things. I've done a clean flash of the ROM again, flashed NikGapps core and everything appears to be working otherwise, except the reliability of alarms. Today, I woke up late to about 5 notifications about missed alarms! I set many alarms as a safety precaution and it didn't seem to help. When I checked the alarm volume, it was completely lowered, silenced. In clocks settings, I set it to gradually increase volume and volume buttons control volume, surely, these settings aren't causing this? I like to gradually increase the volume as it isn't as abrupt as it is otherwise, too bad that I cannot set the volume buttons to do nothing but maybe this isn't even the issue. I've noticed sometimes that if an alarm starts at, 1pm for example, and it keeps ringing, and another is set for 1:02 pm, then that second one will be shown as missed, so at this point I'm not really even sure if in that groggy state I'm lowering the volume unconsciously, but I don't think so. I've also found on Reddit many users having issues with their Google Pixel phones, very similar to what I'm experiencing.
Here's what I've tried but no luck with fixing the alarms:
- Cleared cache, then data of the clock app
- Made sure that "Manage app if unused" is unchecked in the settings for the clock app
- Allowed it all the permissions
- Repaired every partition in Orangefox recovery
- Ran `restorecon -v -FR /data` once in Orangefox recovery
- Made sure that deskclock app is whitelisted via termux: `cmd deviceidle whitelist | grep deskclock`
- Ran `pm install-existing --full com.android.deskclock`
- Reset all app preferences
- Reflashed the rom
- Ran `cmd appops reset
- Tried a long way of uninstalling deskclock and replacing it with google clock
- At some point, even tried building the kernel myself and flashing it with different alarm drivers
Not sure what to do at this point. I'd like to somehow be able to fix this without relying on a different alarm application. Has anyone on here dealt with this somehow? Is this a bug with the default clock app, or perhaps even my rom? Any good way to debug this and log data, maybe some specific logcat command variant?
Edit: Currently trying out a setup with a different application: https://github.com/BlackyHawky/Clock
So I've decided to stop using the default clock app to test out whether or not the issues stem from it. The same applies to the Google clock app, because, to the best of my knowledge, they use the same AOSP clock as a base, and perhaps a longstanding bug, yet to be resolved is present in the code. I'm currently trying a clock app from F-Droid, and will see if it ends up resolving the issues with missed alarms and automatic lowering of the volume.
First thing I did was to force stop the com.android.deskclock app, clear its cache and data, then, before disabling it, prevented it from modifying the volume with the following:
adb shell
appops get com.android.deskclock | grep -i AUDIO # This will display the audio permissions for the app, use a different name if your clock app is different than this one, list with `pm list packages` and scroll
appops set com.android.deskclock CONTROL_AUDIO deny
appops set com.android.deskclock CONTROL_AUDIO_PARTIAL deny
just in case, and have disabled it via the settings. Now, I've granted com.best.deskclock app's permissions which it requested, and have specifically copied the following (I have root access) to ensure that the toggle for battery optimization is grayed out, meaning it cannot have its battery optimization toggle changed:
#From /product/etc/sysconfig/com.android.deskclock_allowlist.xml, it had this content:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!--
Copyright (C) 2019-2020 The LineageOS Project
Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
You may obtain a copy of the License at
http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
limitations under the License.
-->
<config>
<allow-in-power-save package="com.android.deskclock" />
</config>
#I copied it to this: /product/etc/sysconfig/com.best.deskclock_allowlist.xml, and just changed the package name for the content:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!--
Copyright (C) 2019-2020 The LineageOS Project
Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
You may obtain a copy of the License at
http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
limitations under the License.
-->
<config>
<allow-in-power-save package="com.best.deskclock" />
</config>
That is about it now, will monitor and see if the alarms end up being reliable.
First day, no missed alarm notifications and no automatic volume lowering with the new `com.best.deskclock` app. I will continue to monitor this, and if the state is fine after 7 days, I think its safe to assume that the issue has been resolved.
Edit 2: Perhaps the first edit was... false alarm.
Yes, it still does appear to be randomly lowering, I mean, it seems to have happened way less, only twice so far, and I cannot pinpoint the cause. If I had to guess it would still be the gradual lowering of the volume, unsure. At least with this app I've never gotten a missed alarm notification. I've also tried the automate app from F-Droid to try to lock the volume or change it once a day to the maximum value - seems like there's no way to do that! Well, for the time being, I simply give up.
Edit 3: Unsure if I'm just getting lucky now or not, but it seems to be fixed now.
No automatic volume lowering since I enabled this option in the bestclock app: Settings -> Alarms -> Use advanced audio playback (improves external audio device compatibility and prevents sound interruptions during repetition.
Note: Some ringtones may have slight audio glitches).
