Ghost alarm

My phone has a ghost alarm and I need to rant about it.

I googled but there is hardly any material on this. Its pandemic world and I don't have to be dependent on all the wide range of morning alarms. But now this is something to deal with.

The bug is that my phone starts a typical alarm sound, as soon as I plug it to power charger - whether at night or in the middle of the day. And then for added measure, it goes off again at 2-ish am & 4-ish am. Keeps me up all night. It stops only after pressing any button. Gwad how I hate that particular alarm tune ! Hate it.

I called Apple Support - which first of all is hard to find. Their solution was to delete all apps, backup only photos. Then erase the phone & reconfigure it. I just upgraded to their latest phone & I have to bear with this low-grade bug ! I have borne with this for more than a year now and its severe problem now. 

So after simmering for some more time, I decided to delete apps in iterations, to find the culprit. First to go were the million games my kids had downloaded. No difference. Then went news and other miscellaneous apps. Now remaining were my favorite Facebook, essential Gmail and financials ones. Before sacrificing the Bank and Mail apps, I decided to delete Facebook. My screen-time usage of FB was through the roof anyway. Oh how peacefully I slept that night. Like a baby.

Omg, so the FB app wanted me to be online forever ? Even skipping on phone charging obligation ? Oh how much more devious could FB be !?!? All those stories to increase our mobile on app or online presense times, were perfectly true. No scope for being in denial. It worked.

Then I switched to Instagram for my dose of showing & viewing Art. Few peaceful days and then it started again. Oh my ! Ofcourse FB & IN are the same family of apps. ! Ridiculous. Off went INSTA too, from my phone.

Now the only way to get my fix was Mobile Browser for FB & IN. Few peaceful days. And here it is again. Solution, is to close the tab with FB & IN on it. My gosh, that leaves me laptop browser to access these sites; like all other sane people are doing. 

Then I switched to watching shows on Prime, all day long. And now the alarm is back again. Which means its Apple bug - to keep me hooked on using it all the time.

I am this close to throwing my phone away and switching to flip-phone.

Update 9/12: Fixed after I took it to the Apple store, vented at them. They reinstalled the OS and erased everything. Basically started fresh without any backup except photos.