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The issue: There has recently (once again) appeared a random "alarm" notification which displays as an alarm clock icon followed by a random time located in the upper left corner of my lock screen. The time on this alarm changes randomly throughout the day and is always a peculiar random time (e.g. 9:42, 3:14, 6:06) rather than something I would set in an application.

lockscreen

I say "once again" because this happened on my Pixel 4a and now my Pixel 6. I even wiped and reinstalled the OS from the factory image via adb tools. There are no apps installed that aren't from the Play Store and nothing, in my opinion, that is considered fringe or questionable.

Why is this seemingly innocuous alarm clock an issue? It seems to be some kind of upcoming alarm which is causing my overnight DND to become disabled, thus causing notifications for spam and other emails and texts to ring through and WAKE ME UP!! It's basically a form of torture.

I've reported this to Google support many times and (unsurprisingly) they've told me to reset to factory defaults to get rid of it rather than actually figure out what's causing it. I'm fed up and would like to know if it's possible to use the available adb tools (or something else) to debug this thing on my lock screen. If I can at least find out what application it's from then I can make an informed decision about how to resolve it.

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  • Have you restored backup after performing the factory reset? Because if such a strange behavior follows you from one device to another then there has to be something special in your set-up. It could be your system settings or one of the apps you have installed. How far away are those alarms set from the current time? How frequent does it occurs? Have you tried to capture adb logcat in the period when such an alarm appears?
    – Robert
    Aug 25, 2022 at 18:09
  • I haven't restored a backup, but I have reinstalled most of the same applications from my account in the play store. The times appear to be completely random. They persist for a while then disappear then a new alarm appears with another random time. Thank you for the logcat suggestion. I'm going to see what I can find with that and will likely have some follow up.
    – NisplayDame
    Aug 25, 2022 at 20:01
  • It launches the Alarm dialog (unsurprisingly). That doesn't clear up why it's there in the first place when no alarm is set. I haven't found anything else useful in logcat.
    – NisplayDame
    Aug 26, 2022 at 2:04
  • When the unknown alarm appears, is there no corresponding alarm set on any Clock app? Have any of the alarms fired off and show a notification/screen to snooze/stop? I know Google Assistant can set a one-time alarm using the "set alarm" command that will be automatically deleted after it fires off, but it should also be shown on the Clock app, and AFAIK the alarm is not shared across other devices on the same Google account though...
    – Andrew T. ♦
    Aug 26, 2022 at 8:13
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    The randomness hints at maybe a "prize" award or some game deadline maybe for a championship or team game. Any games you have with these social or team linking configurations?
    – wbogacz
    Aug 26, 2022 at 20:08

1 Answer 1

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Credit to @wbogacz. It was actually the ISS tracking app. It notifies you when the space station will be overhead in case you want to look up and see it. This is where the ghost alarm was coming from.

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