Alarm.com Apple Watch App - command not verified

Support
1

When I use the ADC Apple Watch app to arm or disarm the system it works fine but then a few minutes later I received the following notification:

Your command could not be verified, but we will continue trying. Refresh to check the latest status

Is there a way to figure out what is causing that?

2

Just to clarify, you see that message on the Apple Watch?

That would just indicate that the ADC app is having trouble receiving acknowledgement of the command. It may be an issue with communication at the watch, or related to the ADC smart watch app.

Can you provide a couple times when this occurred so I can look at the history?

3

Just to clarify, you see that message on the Apple Watch?

Yes, I only see that notification when I use the Apple Watch. This does not happen when I use the app on the phone.
That said if I am not wearing the watch when the notification arrives then I do see it on the phone but that’s just the way notifications work on iOS.

Since those are notifications I do not have a recorded history but I can easily replicate that. I’ll try to keep track of a few.
This actually happened a few minutes ago:

11/02 8:10 AM PST - disarm from watch
11/02 8:14 AM PST - arm stay from watch
11/02 8:17 AM PST - received notification

Both disarm and arm commands can trigger those notifications.

4

I used it three times this morning with a slight variation each time:

11/02 8:10 AM PST - disarm from watch
11/02 8:14 AM PST - arm stay from watch
11/02 8:17 AM PST - received notification

11/02 9:04 AM PST - disarm from watch
11/02 9:07 AM PST - arm stay from panel
11/02 9:10 AM PST - received notification

11/02 10:56 AM PST - disarm from watch
11/02 10:59 AM PST - received notification
11/02 11:00 AM PST - arm stay from panel

5

Alright, thank you, I see no reason why it should fail. The event history shows correct acknowledgement and confirmation from the panel that the action took place immediately following the commands.

This is likely an issue between the phone and watch. Are you doing this with your Watch and phone both on you at the time? It is possible that switching from bluetooth to Wifi or vice-versa would cause inbound status updates to not reach the watch.

6

It depends. Sometimes I have both the phone and the watch on me and sometimes not. The notification happens regardless.

I just tried again with the wifi disabled on my phone and the notification still came 3 to 4 minutes later.

7

It would be the watch you would want to isolate. I would try turning off wifi on the watch.

The watch switching from bluetooth to wifi and back again might be a cause.

8

I still receive the notifications even with the wifi turned off on the watch.

Also I really don’t know what is this command that could not be verified because the status is properly updated on the watch once the panel/adc.com change from armed to disarmed and vice versa. The notification only happens 3 to 4 minute later.

9

Ah, well that’s weirder, if the watch actually gets the status update correctly.

There is no notification sent via Alarm.com’s backend, in this case the message you are seeing is referencing phone to watch communication. This may just be a bug in the app.

I’ll bring this to ADC and note the timestamps when you reported it happening. I’ll follow up here with any news!

10

Any news from ADC regarding this issue?

11

They had not heard of this as a widespread thing when reported and there was trouble trying to test it. I just followed up again and they had no success trying to recreate.

There may be something about testing that is different from your setup. A couple things they mentioned:

  1. What is the OS of both devices?
  2. What version of the Alarm.com app is being used?
  3. Do you set your Alarm.com app to remain logged in?
  4. Is your phone locked while testing?
  5. Try sending the command from the watch, and keep the app open and make sure the phone does not time out the display or lock. Any change?
12

  1. iPhone 12 and Watch series 6 fully up to date

  2. Latest (4.17)

  3. What does that mean? The app is set up to unlock with Face ID when opened.

  4. Yes

  5. We might be onto something here. Here is what I tried. First, I turned the wifi off on both devices just to make sure my local network was not filtering something. Then I did two different tests:

a.

  • Open the phone app
  • Arm the system to “Arm (Stay)”
  • The app shows “Armed Stay”
  • Disarm the system from the watch and wait to confirm it was indeed disarmed on the watch
  • Keep the app open on the phone but DO NOT refresh the app itself. The phone apps kept showing “Armed Stay” while it was disarmed.
  • After about 3 minutes the pop up did show up on the phone since it was open at the time.

b. Exact same thing except for the last two steps

  • Keep the app open on the phone AND DO refresh the app itself. The phone apps showed “Disarmed” while it was disarmed.
  • The message never showed up

I tested a. and b. twice and got the same results each time.

13

Ok thank you for testing. That is an odd distinction, whether dynamically displayed or not I would expect the status to be available to the app.

Is background app refresh still a thing on the latest iOS? Should be under Settings > General > Background App Refresh. I’m curious if you enable this for the Alarm.com app do you notice any difference?

14

The Alarm.com app does not show up under the background app refresh list. I even reinstalled it just to make sure.

15

Interesting, I wonder if there is a permissions reason that isn’t showing up there. I’ll check with ADC and do a little testing to see if I can recreate that too.

16

This is definitely not an isolated issue. I arrived to this thread after a google search. I’ve had this issue for a while and was curious what it is about. I don’t have an Apple Watch, but I use the widget from the app to control the scenes quickly. I rarely go inside the app to change alarm status.
Based on what you guys are saying it could be an issue from app to widget/watch. It’s not a big issue though, only an annoyance.