Do alarms transfer to a new iPhone? Mostly — check these 6 things

Just set up an iPhone 18 Pro, or planning to when the Duo ships in October? The short answer on alarms: your Clock alarms usually come across, but "usually" is doing real work in that sentence. Apple says alarms included in a backup or a device-to-device transfer appear on the new phone — and the community threads are full of people whose alarms arrived switched off, silent, or still ringing on the old iPhone in a drawer.

New-phone week is also new-iOS week this year — iOS 27 lands alongside the new hardware — so a lot changes under your alarm at once. Here's what transfers, what quietly breaks, and the five-minute check that saves you from finding out at 7 a.m.

Quick answer: Quick Start and backup restores carry Clock alarms, but check they're actually on, that each alarm's sound isn't reset, and that the volume settings survived. Third-party alarm apps lose their permissions on a new device and must be opened and re-granted. And your old iPhone keeps ringing its alarms until you erase it or turn them off.

What transfers on its own

• Clock alarms — via Quick Start (device-to-device) or an iCloud/computer backup restore, your alarm list comes across, times and repeat days included.
• Your sleep schedule — it lives in Health, which syncs through iCloud, so the Sleep | Wake Up alarm reappears once Health finishes syncing.
• WakeUpBroo alarms note: any app's data transferring is separate from its permissions transferring — which is where the next section comes in.

The 6 things that don't come across cleanly

1. Alarms arrive — switched off

The most common surprise. One-time alarms that already fired transfer in the off state by design, and repeating alarms can arrive toggled off too, especially from an older backup. Open Clock → Alarms on the new phone and check the toggles, not just the list.

2. Alarm sounds reset

Custom and purchased tones don't always survive the move, and an alarm whose tone went missing can fall back to a different sound — or behave like an alarm set to None. Tap into each alarm you rely on and confirm its Sound.

3. Volume settings start fresh

Ringtone and Alerts volume on the new phone is whatever setup chose, not necessarily what you had. And since this year's new phones ship with iOS 27, check the new Match Ringtone Volume toggle in Sounds & Haptics — turning it off gives alarms their own volume slider, which is worth doing once while you're in there.

4. Attention Aware is back on

Setting up Face ID on a new iPhone re-enables Attention Aware Features, the setting that quietly lowers alarm volume when the phone thinks you're looking at it. If you'd turned it off on the old phone, that choice did not transfer: Settings → Face ID & Passcode → Attention Aware Features → off again.

5. Third-party alarm apps lose their permissions

Apps transfer; their permissions don't, entirely. An alarm app on a new iPhone typically needs to be opened once, needs notifications re-allowed, needs re-adding to your Sleep Focus allow-list, and — for apps using iOS 26+'s AlarmKit, WakeUpBroo included — needs the alarm permission granted again when it asks. An alarm app that was never opened on the new phone will not ring on the new phone. This is the third-party version of alarms not working after an iOS update, and the fix is the same: open the app, re-grant, test.

WakeUpBroo specifically: reinstall, open it, allow alarms when prompted, and you're done — there's no account to sign into, and wakeupbroo.com/code works exactly as before.

6. The old iPhone keeps ringing

Alarms don't sync between devices — they copy. Until you erase the old phone, it has its own complete alarm list, and plenty of people have been woken by a muffled 6 a.m. alarm from a trade-in box. Erase it, or at least open Clock on it and switch everything off before it goes in the drawer.

The five-minute first-night check

1. Clock → Alarms: every alarm you need is on, with the right sound.
2. Sounds & Haptics: volume up; on iOS 27, set the separate alarm slider.
3. Face ID & Passcode: Attention Aware off (if that's your preference).
4. Open your alarm app, re-grant everything it asks for.
5. Set a test alarm two minutes out, lock the phone, silent switch on. Loud ring = you're done.
6. Old phone: alarms off or device erased.

The part a new phone doesn't fix

A new iPhone transfers your alarms — and it also transfers the reason you oversleep, which was never the hardware. The dismiss is still one slide, still within arm's reach, still doable half-asleep with no memory of it. If that's the actual problem, the fix on the new phone is the same as on the old one: an alarm you can't stop from bed. WakeUpBroo has no snooze and no dismiss button — it stops only when you type a rotating code from wakeupbroo.com/code on a laptop or other device across the room. Same setup, any iPhone, foldable included.