I use the Android app AlarmClock to turn off an ‘occupants asleep’ item to control various items, and recently (not sure when it started) a ‘phantom alarm’ has done this at 4am. There is no alarm set for 4am on my phone (and it still appears when I turn all alarms off).
In the app’s log, it is reported as “sent by null” (see log below), What can I do to investigate and fix this?
11-13 20:34:12.265 22748 22748 D BackgroundTasksManager: Got value ‘ValueWithInfo(value=1763092800000, mappedValue=null, type=Timestamp, debugInfo=Got alarm time update to 04:00 2025-11-14 which was sent by null)’ for alarmClock
There’s an app on your device that sets an “alarm”. It seems that the app is doing this to get woken up and do some background work, I guess. The openHAB app has a list of apps that show this behavior and thus ignores alarms by these apps. But in this case the app isn’t known (`sent by null`). Not sure what can be done here.
Thanks, is there nothing l can do at the Android level to find the misbehaving app? It certainly doesn’t help if it won’t disclose its name when setting the alarm!
I’ve applied a simple temporary workaround to ignore alarms set before 0600, wrapping my updated AlarmClock item processing with
if ((AlarmClock.state as DateTimeType).getZDT().getHour() > 5)
Hopefully that will help others with the same problem where the phantom alarm is distinct in time from intentional alarms. Would it be possible to add null to the blacklist of ignored alarms sources as a longer term fix without losing genuine alarms?
You need to install the app from F-Droid once the change is merged and released, as Play Store doesn’t allow this permission. Once we know the app sending invalid alarm clocks, it can be added to the ignore list and you can continue using the app from Play Store (if you do so).
Thanks, have installed that, found the offending app, and removed it, its a medication reminder that is no longer needed. Hope that helps others too!
12-16 10:51:29.026 21648 21648 D BackgroundTasksManager: Alarm sent by eu.smartpatient.mytherapy
12-16 10:51:29.027 21648 21648 D BackgroundTasksManager: Got value ‘ValueWithInfo(value=1765944000000, mappedValue=null, type=Timestamp, debugInfo=Got alarm time update to 04:00 2025-12-17 which was sent by eu.smartpatient.mytherapy)’ for alarmClock
The app had been battery optimized, which is likely when it started setting alarms as a fallback wakeup, on running it warned that notifications were disabled. There were no reminders set for 0400 so i expect that was just to trigger an update cycle to prepare the next days notifications.
Because of that, it’s likely that any openhab users who do actively use the app won’t get any value from android Alarms that it sets, so should be ok to blacklist.
Sorry to necropost but I have a similar issue with a phantom alarm in another app. How can I find out what’s causing it? I installed this openHAB but not sure what to do with it to see such a log mentioned above. Please help!
Pardon my ignorance, but in what app, specifically? I installed F-Droid, and then OpenHAB, but I don’t see debug notifications in either of those app settings. Do I need to install something else? Or do something special with OpenHAB? I don’t have an OpenHAB server so the app really isn’t doing anything on my phone currently. I feel like I’m missing a step (or app).
