saying the dog ate my homework

Where Did The Phrase “The Dog Ate My Homework” Come From?

Dogs are known as man’s best friend. Dogs keep us safe, are hard workers … and can provide a handy excuse in a pinch. Maybe that’s why versions of the classic expression the dog ate my homework have been around for hundreds of years.

Today, the dog ate my homework is used as a stock example of the kind of silly excuses schoolchildren give for why their work isn’t finished. Very rarely do people say, “the dog ate my homework” and expect it to be taken literally; they use the expression as an example of a typically flimsy excuse.

So where did the phrase come from?

Forrest Wickman, a writer for Slate , describes the legend of the 6th-century Saint Ciarán of Clonmacnoise as the alleged first recorded “the dog ate my homework” story. According to the tale, Saint Ciarán had a tame young fox that would take his writings to his master for him. One day, the fox grew up and decided to eat the leather strap binding the writings together instead. Still, this tale is more Garden-of-Eden parable and less terrible schoolchild excuse.

The notion that dogs will eat just about anything, including paper, turns up in lots of stories over the centuries. An example comes from The Humors of Whist , published in 1808 in Sporting Magazine . In the story, the players are sitting around playing cards when one of them remarks that their companion would have lost the game had the dog not eaten the losing card. Good boy.

Some attribute the creation of the dog ate my homework to a joke that was going around at the beginning of the 20th century. In a tale found as far back as an 1894 memoir by Anglican priest Samuel Reynolds Hole, a preacher gives a shortened version of a sermon because a dog got into his study and ate some of the pages he had written. However, the clerk loved it because they had been wanting the preacher to shorten his sermons for years.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary , the first example of the dog ate my homework excuse in print can be found in a speech given by retiring headmaster James Bewsher in 1929 and published in the Manchester Guardian : “It is a long time since I have had the excuse about the dog tearing up the arithmetic homework.” The way this comment is phrased suggests that the whole dog ate my homework story had been around for some time before it was put in print.

When was the word homework created?

But in order for a dog to eat homework specifically, homework had to be invented (oh, and how we wish it hadn’t been). True, the word homework , as in what we call today housework , appears as early as 1653. But homework , as in school exercises to be done at home, isn’t found until 1852. Once we had homework , it was only a matter of time before the dog was accused of eating it.

How we use this phrase now

No matter the origin, sometime in the 1950s, the expression became set as the dog ate my homework . This inspired any number of riffs on the theme, like my cow ate my homework or my brother ate my homework . In the 1960s, the dog ate my homework continued to gain popularity. The expression popped up a couple times in politics over the years, like when President Reagan said to reporters in 1988, “I had hoped that we had marked the end of the ‘dog-ate-my-homework’ era of Congressional budgetry … but it was not to be.”

It seems unlikely that the dog ate my homework was ever used consistently or frequently by actual schoolchildren. In fact, it’s the unlikeliness of the story that makes it so funny and absurd as a joke. Instead, teachers and authority figures appear to have cited the dog ate my homework many times over the years as such a bad excuse they can’t believe students are really using it.

In the 21st century, students don’t spend as much time working with physical pen and paper as they once did. That may contribute to the decline in the use of the phrase. So, maybe soon we’ll see a new equally absurd phrase pop up. Come on Zoomers, you’ve got this.

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Why Do We Say “The Dog Ate My Homework”?

The history of the delinquent schoolchild’s favorite excuse..

Did this sad Lab eat your homework?

iStockphoto.

Viacom announced on Monday that Mitt Romney had declined to appear on Nickelodeon’s Kids Pick the President special this year, citing time constraints. President Obama’s camp pounced on Romney’s decision, saying, “Kids demand details … ‘The dog ate my homework’ just doesn’t cut it when you’re running for president. ” When did “my dog ate my homework” become known as schoolchildren’s favorite excuse?

The 1970s. Delinquent schoolchildren and adults have been blaming their shortcomings on their pets for more than a century, but it wasn’t until the 1970s that “my dog ate my homework” came to be considered the No. 1 likely story. One of the first sad sacks who was said to blame his dog for his own ill-preparedness was a priest. In this anecdote, which appeared as early as 1905, a clergyman pulls his clerk aside after a service to ask him whether his sermon seemed long enough. The clerk assures him that it was very nice, “just the right length,” and the priest is relieved. “I am very glad to hear you say that,” he says, “because just before I started to come here my dog got hold of my sermon and ate some of the leaves .” The story was repeated again and again . The first citation of the excuse in the Oxford English Dictionary is a 1929 article from the Manchester Guardian , which reads, “It is a long time since I have had the excuse about the dog tearing up the arithmetic homework.” In Bel Kaufman’s best-selling 1965 novel Up the Down Staircase , a list of students’ excuses for not having their homework includes “ My dog went on my homework ” and “ My dog chewed it up .” Even in 1965, however, it was still just another excuse.

“My dog ate my homework” became known as the quintessential far-fetched excuse in the next decade, when the phrase was used over and over . In a 1976 account of the Watergate tapes, E.C. Kennedy describes listening to President Nixon “ working on the greatest American excuse since the dog ate my homework .” A 1977 article from Alaska’s Daily News-Miner describes the difficulty students faced in coming up with a new excuse since “ ‘My dog ate my term paper’ is no longer acceptable .”

The excuse was alluded to more and more throughout the 1980s. A 1982 Time magazine column on excuses suggested that “The dog ate my homework is a favorite with schoolchildren,” while a 1987 New York Times column about how students were starting to blame malfunctioning computers and printers quoted one teacher as saying she recently received “ a note from a student’s mother saying the dog ate his homework .” Even the president picked up on the trend: When Congress pushed spending approval to the last minute in 1988, Ronald Reagan complained to reporters, “ I had hoped that we had marked the end of the ‘dog-ate-my-homework’ era of Congressional budgetry … but it was not to be .” It was all over television, with references to the excuse on shows like The Simpsons and Full House . By 1989, the narrator of Saved by the Bell theme was singing, “ And the dog ate all my homework last night .”

The phrase continued to grow more popular. Between 1990 and 2000, the New York Times wrote articles with headlines such as “ Beyond ‘Dog Ate My Homework’ ” and “ Homework Help Sites (Or, the Dog Ate My U.R.L.) ,” while The New Yorker described one criminal’s accounts of his wrongdoings as having “a decided my-dog-ate-my-homework quality.” Children’s books tried to capitalize on the trend with titles like A Dinosaur Ate My Homework , Aliens Ate My Homework , Godzilla Ate My Homework , and My Teacher Ate My Homework , daring to use the term to promote reading and education. Such titles have continued into the 2000s, but in recent years the phrase seems to finally be losing steam .

Bonus Explainer: An Obama spokesperson also said, “ It’s no surprise Romney decided to play hookey .” Why do we call cutting school “playing hookey”? To play hookey began as an Americanism in the 19 th century. The earliest known citation comes from 1848, from John Russell Bartlett’s Dictionary of Americanisms , where it was said to mean “to play truant” and noted to be “ a term used among schoolboys, chiefly in the State of New York .” Word historians usually suggest that it’s from to hook it meaning to run away , a term as old as the Revolutionary War. However, others have proposed that it might derive from the Dutch expression hoekje spelen , the Dutch expression for “hide and seek”—especially since playing hooky emerged in New York during a time when it had a larger Dutch population.

Got a question about today’s news?  Ask the Explainer .

Explainer thanks Barry Popik, Jesse Sheidlower of the Oxford English Dictionary, and Ben Zimmer of the Visual Thesaurus and Vocabulary.com .

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From Our Listeners

Sometimes the dog really does eat your homework.

Last week, we brought you the story of how the phrase "The Dog Ate My Homework" came to be and how it morphed into a palpably ridiculous excuse. Turns out, sometimes its not an excuse at all. Weekend Edition host Scott Simon has a few stories from our listeners that swear, honest, the dog did eat their homework.

Copyright © 2012 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

the dog ate my homework

English [ edit ]

Phrase [ edit ].

• 2011 May 6, Damian Carrington, “Environment action delays blamed on 'dog ate my homework' excuses”, in The Guardian ‎ [1] , archived from the original on 2022-08-24 : Their reasons for missed deadlines are mostly of the " dog ate my homework variety" including such easily foreseeable events as yesterday's elections and that the badger culling policy is "difficult and sensitive".
• 2014 September 12, Oscar Webb, quoting Donald Campbell, “UK Government Changes Its Line On Diego Garcia Flight Logs Sought in Rendition Row - Again”, in VICE ‎ [2] , archived from the original on 2022-12-05 : The government's excuses for Diego Garcia's missing records are getting increasingly confused and desperate. Ministers could hardly be less credible if they simply said ' the dog ate my homework .'
• 2017 February 18, Mia Berman, “Go West-minster, Young Mastiff”, in HuffPost ‎ [3] , archived from the original on 2019-04-09 : Our immune system's weak; we've been sick as a dog, missing work and school, resorting to " the dog ate my homework " excuses amidst these frigid dog days of winter.

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My dog ate my homework

Posted by Steven on March 28, 2010 at 19:37

Where did the phrase "My dog ate my homework" come from?

© 1997 – 2024 Phrases.org.uk. All rights reserved.

Echols: So, the dog ate my homework?

The dog ate my homework, a colorful and simple statement. Say it out loud with me: The dog ate my homework!

You're smiling just now at the thought of saying something like this to a parent or teacher. Or, you're smiling at a memory of having actually said it, straight-faced, and super serious to someone. After all, this is the oldest line passed down through generations and generations of school-aged children. This saying probably predates the birth of our country. Heck, that excuse is probably older than dirt. When we hear it, we assume that those who utter the phrase simply aren't being truthful as to why they failed to do what everyone else in a class did … their homework.

Personally, I don't remember ever using that line, although I know folks who did. And Neely Tucker, it just doesn't sound the same when you say "the goats ate my homework!" We know that cats don't actually eat homework. So the dastardly blame has to fall on "man's best friend," our loyal, sweet, beloved puppy dogs.

"The dog ate my homework" is a line used in a seemingly feeble attempt to cover up the fact that you didn't do your homework. As the story usually goes, the person blaming dogs really forgot to do their homework or they simply just left it at home. If you can believe it, there's even a Wiki-How page that explains how to create the best excuse for not having homework completed on time. I wonder if people who actually might use that site think that teachers and parents never find out. Oh the joys of the World Wide Web, as if we needed any creative help with that one.

Either way, at some point in our lives, someone we know has said the dog ate their homework. Folks who hear that silly, unbelievable excuse of a reason typically react the same way. They shake their heads and roll their eyes back. It's as if your ears suddenly develop a shooting pain at the very sound of the excuse. Does it surprise you to know that "The dog ate my homework" ranks in the top three excuses that teachers hear every year?

I'm told that if you show your teacher the pieces of dog-shredded homework, you might get a pass to re-do it the next day. Beware though, teachers have an unexplained sixthsense that allows them to detect real dog-torn paper as opposed to people-torn paper. According to the Wonderopolis website, dogs will eat just about anything if given the opportunity. The site goes on to say that scientists believe when a dog eats homework, other paper, and non-food items it could be because of good, old-fashioned boredom. Dogs turn their boredom into curiosity and begin to explore things, which ultimately results in finding shredded scraps of homework! And Wonderopolis takes it one step further. If not boredom, your paper shredding dog might be hungry. Whether it's food he smells on your paper from your fingers touching a sandwich you ate for lunch or just your scent on the paper, the best advice for a shredding, chewing, paper-eating pup is to keep your homework, books, newspaper, and other chew-able paper out of your canine's reach.

Now we know some of the reasons why dogs might actually eat homework. But what if, what if … your dog really, honestly, did eat the homework? What if you owned a super energetic puppy that loves you more than anything in the world? What if that puppy hated it when you left the house for any length of time and found things to chew that smelled like you? What if you owned an angelically sweet border collie who, dare I say it… actually eats your homework?

Who would believe you? Certainly not any teachers and probably not even your own parents. I'm here to tell you, from personal experience in our home, that this really can happen. But there is more to this ominous cliché. In addition to the delicious homework that gets eaten, dogs today like to also consume your monthly bills, your notes for work, your cell phone, your shoes, and whatever else they can get their teeth on for appetizers.

Recently, I got a 40 percent off retail coupon in the mail. I placed it on my kitchen counter and left the room for two seconds. Upon my quick return, that coupon was cut down to about 1 percent off because it was in a million, tiny, shredded pieces on the floor. And then there were notes I made while on a conference call with a client. After finishing the call, I left the notes on a table. I walked out to get something from my car. When I got back, the notes looked as though they'd gone through one of those professional shredders.

We have our very own four-legged furry little personal shredder named Scout. You can see it in his eyes that he's a shredder. I firmly believe that puppy dogs shred things because they miss us or they're mad at us for leaving them alone for a bit. Or it could be because they're bored or hungry. My family knows first-hand that a dog really can eat your homework. Around our house, it's not so much that Scout eats the homework, but he can certainly shred it into tiny little microscopic pieces!

So the next time you hear someone say, "The dog ate my homework," ask them if they've been to our house. Tweet your story about missing paperwork or homework to @TheDonnaEchols!

My Dog Ate My Homework

“What happened this time?” the teacher sighs. “You forgot? You dropped it in a puddle? Your sister stole it?”

“My dog ate it,” I state simply.

“Really?” Ms. Reynolds regards me skeptically. “Your dog ate your homework?”

“Can’t you do better than that?”

“Fine, go ahead. Explain.” Ms. Reynolds folds her wrinkled hands neatly on her desk and stares up at me attentively over her wire-rimmed spectacles.

I inhale deeply, collecting my thoughts.

“It all started when I was walking home from school on Friday. It was a sunny afternoon and a gentle breeze stirred the budding leaves on the trees, bringing with it the scent of spring.

“As I was passing the Metropolitan Ville Pet Shop, something in the window caught my eye. I pushed open the door to the shop and went straight to the dog display window. A little beagle pup jumped up and put his paws on the glass, wagging his tail happily. I put my hand up to the invisible wall separating us. The beagle’s big brown eyes were alight with excitement and I could have sworn it was smiling at me. I turned to leave, but it was as though a string had been wrapped around my heart, fastening me to the adorable pup in the window.”

“Uh huh,” Ms. Reynolds hums. “And if the dog was in the window, how exactly did it get at your homework?”

“Well, I bought it of course!” I say, puffing up my chest like a proud parent. “Right then and there, I called over the salesman and-”

“Where’d you get the money from?” Ms. Reynolds cuts me off. “Dogs are expensive.”

I wipe my sweaty hands on my jeans and take a deep breath before continuing. “That’s where things get interesting,” I tell her. “I told the salesman not to sell that puppy to anyone, and then I left. Somehow, I had to get $350! I started looking for a part-time job-”

“You’re thirteen.” Ms. Reynolds purses her lips doubtfully.

“Fourteen, actually,” I correct her. “But anyway, I searched for two whole hours! Then I finally found something. It was a dark, shady building—a warehouse, really. Kinda looked like it was gonna collapse. But a big sign by the door read, “ HIRING ” in bold letters, so I went for it.

“The door creaked as I opened it, then slammed shut.

Inside, it was dark. There was a dirt floor and a round, concrete platform in the centre. On the platform stood a control panel with more buttons than I could count!”

Ms. Reynolds raises her eyebrows skeptically, but motions for me to continue.

“Most were small, but in the centre of the panel was a huge, glowing red button. A sign beside it said HQ . I reached out to press it, but just as my hand brushed the smooth surface, an alarm went off! “

“ ERRR! ERRR! ERRR! ” I say, imitating the blaring alarm. “Then an automated voice kept repeating INTRUDER ALERT, INTRUDER ALERT . I ran for the door, but just as I reached it, someone jumped in front of me, blocking my escape!”

“It was a man, dressed all in black! He towered over me, dark and foreboding. His voice was deep and gravelly when he spoke.”

“‘What do you want?’ he said. “I was scared out of my wits, and I think I may have, uh, wet myself,” I admit. “My voice trembled like a leaf in the wind as I explained how I was looking for a job and had seen the sign out front. I tried to leave, but he invited me back to the platform, and I followed hesitantly.”

“And then what?” Ms. Reynolds says dubiously, tucking a strand of thin grey hair behind her ear.

“Well, he pressed the big red button! And-”

“And… what? A secret staircase appeared?”

“No, no! Of course not!” I deny. “Let’s be realistic here—secret staircases are so yesterday. This is the 21st century!”

“So, it was a portal then?” Ms. Reynolds raises an eyebrow.

“Don’t be silly!” I say. “The floor opened up and swallowed us whole!”

“Oh, yes. Right. How stupid of me!” my teacher cries, throwing her hands in the air. “So, what happened next?”

“I fell,” I say. “And I just kept falling, and falling, and falling, and-”

“Okay, I get the point!” as she snaps and takes a deep breath. “Continue.”

“I felt like I would just keep falling, and then WHAM! I slammed into a thick, gel-like substance—it was a giant vat of jell-o!”

Ms. Reynolds mutters something that sounds like, “Good heavens!”

I ignore her and keep telling my story. “After I ate my way out of the jell-o, the dude in black told me he was a spy! And he hired me to help him protect the country! He gave me all these cool gadgets and gizmos, and then we went up this super-fast elevator to the roof. And there was a jet! It had guns and lasers and missiles! And a stealth mode to make it practically invisible! I even got to fly it!”

“I suppose you flew to some foreign country next, to save the President?” my teacher sighs.

“How did you know?” I say. “We went to Russia and saved President Putin from assassins!”

Ms. Reynolds’ head suddenly snaps up, her grey hair whipping with the motion. “Now, wait just one minute! What do spies and assassins have to do with your homework?”

“Or your dog, for that matter!”

“I needed a job to buy the dog, so I became a spy. By Saturday night, I had made $30,000! I went back to the pet shop and rushed inside. I had more than enough to buy the pup now! I brought him home that night and got him settled in!”

“But as I was sitting on the ground next to him, doing my assignments…” I shrugged. “He grabbed my paper, and, well… My dog ate my homework.”

Braelyn Cheer

Braelyn Cheer is a 14-year-old aspiring author. She loves writing, painting, reading, her dog, and, of course, God.

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My Dog Ate My Homework

From the book The Biggest Burp Ever

My dog ate my homework. That mischievous pup got hold of my homework and gobbled it up.

My dog ate my homework. It’s gonna be late. I guess that the teacher will just have to wait.

My dog ate my homework. He swallowed it whole. I shouldn’t have mixed it with food in his bowl.

 — Kenn Nesbitt

Copyright © 2014. All Rights Reserved.

Reading Level: Grade 1 Topics: Animal Poems , School Poems Poetic Techniques: Irony , Narrative Poems Word Count: 60

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The Dog Ate My Homework

The first known time that anyone used the “dog ate my homework” excuse was, according to writing expert and educationist, Christoper Simpson, in 1835. The student who was said to have uttered the now famous explanation for the absence of homework was Henry Pennywhistle, but other sources attribute the words to a story about a Welsh minister in 1905, and yet another source points to Saint Tyron who in the fifth century found a fox with whom he made friends. At some point, the fox ate his psalms, but “the fox ate my scriptures,” doesn’t quite have the same ring. Whatever. The quote spawned a cottage industry of creative excuses, many of which became children’s books (“Godzilla Ate My Homework,” “A Dinosaur Ate My Homework,” “Aliens Ate My Homework,” “My Teacher Ate My Homework,” and so on).

We know that dogs sometimes do eat things they ought not to, something the author, John Steinbeck” found out when he reportedly found the first draft of his novel, Of Mice and Men , chewed up by his dog.  Steinbeck was known, of course, for his Poodle, “Charley,” who accompanied him on a criss-cross journey “in search of America.”  The book resulted in  Travels with Charley: In Search of America,  though the journey was in the 1960s, and  Of Mice and Men  was published in 1937, so we think the Poodle was innocent. In fact, it was Steinbeck’s dog, Max, who chomped on the first draft of the classic.  Steinbeck owned many dogs in his life, including an Airedale Terrier, but Max’s breed remains a mystery to us.

Image: “Dog Ate my Homework” is available on a t-shirt and hoodie here. 

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The Dog Ate My Homework

I have a lot of sympathy for Gary Hart. Sometimes I don't remember my age, either. I'll get it somewhere in the ballpark, but who can remember everything, and what's a year or two among friends? Then my daughter reminds me, but I tell her I'm not old enough to have a child her age and she must be mixed up. You know how children are; they forget things. They think that you spanked them, when you know for a fact you never raised your voice in anger, let alone your hand.

As far as that goes, there are days when it's hard to remember my own name, or how I got it. I've always had trouble with names. Someone might have changed it, a grandfather or somebody. I don't remember his name, either (memory plays such funny tricks). Maybe my great-grandfather Agnew did it, which might make me related to Spiro. You remember Spiro? Or did he change his name, too? Well, it's a free country; anyone can do it.

But when someone starts writing letters and signing my name, that's the limit. Just the other day I learned that someone got a picture postcard of a man with a red beret, and the card had my name at the end of it. I didn't know anything about it, and I'm prepared to deny it if asked. Or at least, like Edmund Meese, say "I don't remember." Like Meese's loan, it was "totally separated from any knowledge on my part." The letter was unauthorized, in any case, and I'm sure it was inaccurate. I have always favored moving the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Haifa--such nice oranges in Haifa --and I see no reason to apologize for my position on that issue. I mean, I apologize for the ambiguity, if any, but I'm not apologizing for anything, and if I seem to have apologized, well I apologize for that. It was a mistake.

Maybe the dog did it. He ate my homework once. That was in third grade. "Really, Miss Hollihan," I said to the teacher, "he did. The dog ate my homework. I had it all done and it was sitting there on the table, and when I went to pick it up to take it to school the dog came along and just ate it." I know it sounds funny, but you wouldn't believe the things that dog could eat. Well, maybe you had to know the dog. He ate a chicken once, feathers and all, and my father had to pay the farmer for it. The farmer was really mad. I tried to tell Miss Hollihan that, too, but she just looked at me and put a little x after my name in her book. That meant you hadn't done your homework, when everybody knew that I had. It wasn't fair.

So, as I said, I have a lot of sympathy for Gary Hart. We've got a lot in common. I even heard that a famous man is preparing a vicious personal attack on me. One of the news aides here told me. Naturally I counterattacked at once. Any reasonable person would. Maybe I should have seen the attack first, but I'm a busy person. I can't find it now, and I'm certainly prepared to apologize even though it wasn't really my fault--but I can tell you I'm going to get that news aide. There's an awful lot of faulty staff work these days. Actually, I didn't know anything about it; the whole thing was a mistake. Yes, and that other thing, too.

I know that Gary Hart would understand these things. We've got a lot in common. Including the dog. It ate his homework, too.

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Trump: I’m Not Sleeping, I’m Just Resting My ‘Beautiful Blue Eyes’

Donald Trump often denies stories in a way that just provides more evidence that the underlying claim is true. For example, months after the New York Times first reported that Trump was stressing about finding a good nickname for Ron DeSantis , he declared he “doesn’t even think about it,” seemingly confirming that he’d been stewing for some time. And in February, weeks after an anonymously sourced report claimed Trump was obsessing about Taylor Swift endorsing Joe Biden , the former president went on Truth Social and practically begged the pop star not to back his opponent.

Now Trump is at it again. He posted this defense of his frequent naps during his hush-money trial to Truth Social on Thursday afternoon:

Last month, Rolling Stone reported that Trump “has privately raged over … reports that he can’t stop dozing off” in court. The story was pretty embarrassing for Trump; it claimed his perceived enemies (journalists and late-night talk-show hosts) were really getting under his skin by mocking his courtroom antics. Nevertheless, everyone would have forgotten the story fairly quickly if Trump had (a) ignored it and (b) managed to keep his eyes open during his hush-money trial.

Instead, Trump fell asleep in court for a fourth time on Wednesday. And now he’s posted this absurd defense, which doesn’t explain why reporters keep seeing him closing his eyes, dropping his chin to his chest, and letting his head jerk “in a way consistent with sleeping,” as one reporter put it.

But, sure, Trump is just determined to “take it ALL in!!!” as he’s forced to sit through the “Crooked D.A.’s Witch Hunt.” And maybe his nonexistent dog ate some key documents about his hush-money payments.

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iPhone alarm clock issue is the new ‘dog ate my homework’

Apple is reportedly aware of an issue with the iPhone’s alarm clock after some users complained the rudimentary feature has stopped playing sounds.

Emilie Ikeda for NBC’s Today show in the United States reports that a large number of people have taken to social media to complain alarms they’ve had set for years are not functioning as expected. That has caused people to miss wake-up calls for work, class, appointments, and dropping the kids at school.

According to the reporter, Apple is aware of an issue causing some iPhone alarms to not play the expected sounds. It also says the company is working on a fix for the issue.

A rude awakening for some iPhone users 🚨⏰⏲️ Apple says it’s working to fix an issue causing some alarms NOT to play a sound. Here’s what we know —> https://t.co/cNYMgudgXC — Emilie Ikeda (@EmilieIkedaNBC) April 30, 2024

It’s currently not clear what is causing the largely simple piece of functionality to break and Apple didn’t go into any more detail with its statement to the Today show. It’s also not clear how widespread the problem is either.

Some users on TikTok are suggesting it might be the Attention Aware feature, which will turn down the sound on a notification when the device notices you’re looking at the screen. That toggle can be turned on/off under Settings > Face ID and Attention.

Some users have also been told by Apple to check the Settings > Sound & Haptics menu to ensure the volume is turned up on ringtones and alerts and to toggle the “Change With Buttons” switch to off to avoid turning the alarm volume down by accident.

However, the fact Apple is reportedlty working on a fix suggests these mitigations won’t be enough to fully solve the issues for the majority of those affected. We’ll keep you posted when Apple drops the planned update.

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Chris Smith is a freelance technology journalist for a host of UK tech publications, including Trusted Reviews. He's based in South Florida, USA.  …

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