Woke up and immediately realized it was much too bright in my bedroom. My alarm hadn’t woken me.
I jumped into my clothes and rushed to work. 30 mins late. No shave, no coffee, no food but I’m at my desk. 
I checked my volume and it was on 100%. I always shove it full blast before going to bed.
I looked through settings, Volume. There’s a separate alarm volume that somehow was on about 20%. :eek:
All these years, I’ve uselessly used the master volume. (:
Thanks Android.
Found that out the hard way first time I used my phone for an alarm. It has separate volumes for ringer, alarm, and media. I rarely listen to any media on my phone so hadn’t noticed that one until I found out about the alarm.
I’d been lucky that the alarm volume was set high enough for me to hear. Somehow, fumbling with the phone had pushed it way low.
I feel like such a chump. Every night, faithfully setting the master volume to 100%. All for nothing.
There’s no way to know unless you press the gear button and dig into the volume menu.
How vital are you to the business that you passed up coffee to get there?
If I sleep in I still do all my morning routine stuff, I just also send a “running x minutes behind” text.
On mine, when the volume slider is showing there’s an arrow on the right side of it that expands into all the volume sliders.
Mine too. 
Thanks for the tip. I hadn’t tried pressing that arrow before.
I made a fresh pot of coffee in the break room. I’m well caffeinated and awake now.
I could have texted and come in later. I got a project due Friday and wanted to get an early start today. I’ll be here awhile after 5 working on it. I always get more work done after hours when it’s quiet.
Obviously (like me) he isn’t so vital he can’t take some time to post on the SDMB.
Ah, that lovely (not!) feeling of waking up just a bit too well-rested.
Been there, done that.
The master volume - or at least the volume that’s controlled by the hardware buttons on the side - seems to be context-specific. If I’m not playing music or whatever, it controls the ringtone and notifications. If I’m playing music, it controls the media.
Unless it’s the third Tuesday in March, or the moon is halfway to full, and it’s raining in a little-populated zip code in Nebraska, then the hardware buttons get to do something entirely random.
I also recently discovered that I can’t power it down without unlocking it.
Press and hold power… check.
Touch the “power off” icon that then pops up… check
Assume the phone will now shut down… check
Exit movie theater and find the phone battery at 20%… check.
This last time, I watched the screen - and THEN noticed the power-off cycle requires me to really, truly, fershure, honest, cross-my-heart WANT to shut the damn thing down. I’m expecting the next model to require a DNA sample before consenting to power itself down. It’s already got a pulse oximeter built in - easy enough to include a little spike that pops out of that spot when needed, right?
I miss the days when I could simply rip the back off and yank the battery to shut it down in a hurry, but replaceable batteries are SOOOOO last year, and you’re a chump if you want to simply replace a battery rather than just spend $$$$$ on a shiny new phone (whose battery will also go bad in a year).
Honestly, I wish they’d quite “improving” the technology by making it harder to use.
Mine also selects the volume control by default for what you are doing. So when I’m setting the alarm the volume buttons will adjust the alarm volume, watching a video the default is media volume. But that didn’t help me initially because I always forget to check the alarm volume when I’m setting it. Like the OP I was initially just pushing the default volume control for rings and notifications up to the max and the alarm volume was totally off.
Don’t forget if you set the alarm for extra early one day & use the Do Not Disturb feature that the Do Not Disturb is only set for notifications & not alarms; otherwise, you won’t hear anything.
I only use my phone alarm when I’m away but on my @#$%& phone you can’t do anything with the alarm on a locked phone. I need to unlock it just to press <Snooze> or <Silence>. Of course I keep it on a loud alarm to wake me up but the fumbling to unlock it wakes me up…& people in the next room…& the next block. :smack: :o
Thanks for the lesson, I never paid attention to that either.
Even though I can come to work whenever I want. (unless there is a meeting), I still like to stick to a schedule. My day is ruined if I get in “late”, I feel rushed the rest of the day and go home exhausted.
Dang, your wife didn’t wake you, either?
Dang.
Dagnabbit, woman!
or are you the guy that isn’t married? I can’t keep all the Dopers’ lives straight anymore. I stopped updating my spreadsheet…
I use a kindle for an alarm. You set the volume for the alarm when you choose the ring tone, so I guess I’ve always known the volume was separate from the media volume. If it were a once a year kinda thing, I wouldn’t worry. However, I have narcolepsy so the odds are stacked against me in terms of oversleeping. In addition to the Kindle alarm on my pillow (yes, I can sleep for 45 minutes with it going off in my ear), I also use a timer on my floor lamp. A combination of noise and light will usually wake me.
I wish that would happen to me. I usually wake 15 to 30 minutes before the alarm goes off, then I just lie there watching the minutes ever so slowly count down. Or, more accurately, count up.
Yeah, it’s a really good feature because this would happen a thousand times more often since the master volume often gets stuck on mute of vibrate or has been turned down for some reason.
Actually, as documented by Seinfeld, this problem predates smartphones: Why separate knob? WHY SEPARATE KNOB?
I didn’t realize the sync between my iPad and iPhone included alarms until I set my alarm on the iPad for 3:00 A.M. to go catch a plane, and had stumble out of bed to go dig my phone out of my jacket to shut it off. (Most of the time I don’t need an alarm as I wake up too early naturally these days.) Why do they sync the alarm?
Yeah, I like it because my alarm volume is set and doesn’t change but I can turn off the media volume when playing a game in bed next to my sleeping wife and not have to worry about it messing with the alarm.
When you set an alarm in the clock app, you set in order from top to bottom, alarm time, repeat, alarm text, alarm sound, alarm volume, snooze duration, and Vibrate. Each alarm will sound at the value set in ‘alarm volume’, and each alarm can have its own volume. The volume setting overrides the alarm volume in system settings. I keep the alarm volume turned off in system settings, which silences all notifications, but my morning alarm still plays at full volume.
Get dogs. My alarm goes off at 5:30 five days a week. Our dogs wake us up at 5:25 seven days a week.