Why does my iPhone alarm not go off during a call?
The alarm fires on schedule, but the phone call has already claimed the audio hardware at a system level that alarms can't easily push past, so the sound often never makes it to the speaker or earpiece while you're talking.
This isn't a Silent mode or Do Not Disturb problem. Switching the Ring/Silent switch, enabling Do Not Disturb, or turning on Silent mode has no bearing on whether an alarm's sound plays. A live call is a different situation entirely: it runs through CallKit, the framework iOS uses for the Phone and FaceTime apps, and that session ranks above nearly everything else the device can produce sound for. None of the public audio session categories can preempt a connected call, which is why an alarm trying to sound while CallKit is active is fighting a battle it's built to lose.
Is this an AlarmKit bug, or just how iOS audio works?
It's how iOS audio works, not a defect in any particular app. Apple's own Clock app alarms run into the same wall as third-party alarms built on AlarmKit, the framework Apple introduced for this exact purpose — see what AlarmKit actually is if you haven't run into the term before.
AlarmKit alarms, including the ones Pealo schedules from calendar events, are designed to ring through Silent mode and Focus, which covers the overwhelming majority of situations people miss an alert. A phone call is the one exception: the call's audio session was deliberately given a boost so your conversation doesn't get interrupted by a game notification or a podcast. That same protection works against any alarm that tries to sound while you're connected. For a deeper look at how alarm audio differs from a regular notification ping, see AlarmKit versus notifications.
What actually happens on screen while you're on a call?
The alarm still appears — it just can't compete for sound. You'll typically find the alert sitting on the Lock Screen, in Notification Center, or in the Dynamic Island once you glance at your phone, even though nothing played out loud.
The gap is specifically audio, not visibility or scheduling. Critical Alerts, a separate and more restricted category Apple reserves for specific use cases, run at a priority close to CallKit's own, which is part of why they behave unpredictably around an active call — see Critical Alerts compared to AlarmKit for how that category differs from a normal calendar alarm. CallKit uses the same unusually high priority as a critical alert, which can trigger behaviors that wouldn't occur with other, lower priority sessions. Regular alarms, including calendar-based ones, sit a tier below that.
| Alert type | Sound during an active call | Still visible on screen |
|---|---|---|
| Clock app alarm | Usually blocked | Yes |
| AlarmKit alarm (Pealo) | Usually blocked | Yes |
| Standard app notification | Blocked | Yes, as a banner |
| Critical Alert | Sometimes competes with the call | Yes |
How do you avoid missing an alarm while you're on a call?
Check your Lock Screen the moment the call ends, since the alert is almost certainly waiting there even though you never heard it. Building that habit catches more missed alarms than any setting change does.
A few other adjustments help reduce how often this matters. Stacking a shorter lead time on top of your usual one gives you a second chance — Pealo supports several lead times per event, from a minute or two up to an hour, so a short call doesn't automatically wipe out your warning window; see the iPhone calendar alarm app page for how that's configured. If you're on long calls regularly, scanning your calendar before dialing in and mentally noting what's coming up next works better than relying on sound alone. And if alarms seem to go missing even outside of calls, the cause is usually different — the iPhone alarm didn't go off guide walks through those cases separately.
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