My wife and I both use the Alarm.com app on our iPhones. With our false alarms happening lately, I noticed that she is getting “critical notifications” on her phone (which play a special alert sound even while on silent), while I am getting the standard notifications.
I’ve checked all of our iOS notification settings as well as the notifications inside Alarm.com and they are identical. We’ve been sitting next to each other each time this has happened, so the environment is identical too (same wifi, cell signal, etc). Any idea why one phone would get the critical version and one just the standard?
Critical alerts are an iOS message type that gets sent even if the phone is in do not disturb mode or silenced. Was their phone silenced but yours not?
Both of our phones are always on silent mode, including each time we got the alerts. I actually became aware of the issue because I heard her phone sound the alert while it was on silent, but mine only vibrated. Both phones were 5 feet apart and were on the same data connection. I also can see in the iOS Notification Center that hers had a red exclamation triangle beside the notification and mine did not, indicating that my phone only received the standard notification.
I compared every possible setting between the two (both in iOS notification settings and the Alarm.com notifications). My phone definitely has the critical notifications enabled, the same as hers. Screenshot below for reference.
Is there a way to test a critical notification from Alarm.com without setting off the alarm? I know I can put the system in test to avoid police dispatch, but I’d like to not disturb the neighbors either.
Update: thanks to another false alarm, I DID get a critical notification today. I didn’t change any settings since my last update. Maybe it was a fluke for the last couple of times.
Is there a way to test a critical notification from Alarm.com without setting off the alarm? I know I can put the system in test to avoid police dispatch, but I’d like to not disturb the neighbors either.
Critical Alert notifications are sent for the following events:
Alarm
Fire Alarm
Auxiliary Panic
Police Panic
Carbon Monoxide
Fire Panic
Flood Extreme Temp Alarm
Keypad Tamper Alarm
Tamper Alarm
Water Alarm
Entry Delay Trouble
Suspected Entry Delay Alarm
Suspected Alarm
Receiver Jammed Alarm
In App Fire Panic
In App Auxiliary Panic
In App Police Panic
Update: thanks to another false alarm, I DID get a critical notification today. I didn’t change any settings since my last update. Maybe it was a fluke for the last couple of times.
Possible, there may be some reason why iOS reverted to standard on your phone for those. Let us know if you continue to see inconsistency.
