Your Pixel’s Alarm Clock Has a Weird but Fatal Flaw

How many of us still rely on the traditional alarm clock to wake up? This is another task that smartphones have come to dominate in their short time. But both options have their pros and cons: a (charged) smartphone will never fail due to the fact that you have a power outage at night. ( The McCallister family would have had a great time celebrating Christmas in Paris if they had a Pixel.) But your smartphone’s intelligence can also get in the way and even turn off your alarm before you have a chance to wake up.

Recently, Redditor asevarte could n’t figure out why their Pixel wasn’t waking them up. Some days the alarm worked as expected, but other days it didn’t and they woke up with a backup alarm set 30 minutes later. It didn’t make sense. The phone has been set to play a Spotify playlist at a specific time. With the exception of Android’s egregious bug, there was no reason why he shouldn’t have literally sounded the alarm.

And then Asevarte understood it. One morning they woke up before the alarm went off. At the appointed time, the Pixel started playing a random song from the Spotify playlist – The Pixies ” Where Is My Mind?” He passed out almost immediately. But why? The song, for those who don’t know, starts with a high note followed by a loud “STOP”. And then the alarm went off .

My God.

Google Assistant, in an effort to be as convenient as possible, will cancel a recent request if you simply ask it to “stop”. You don’t need “OK Google” or “Hey Google” – just “stop”. Of course, the goal is for the user to say “stop”, but Android may not be able to distinguish your voice from a clear loud “stop” at the beginning of a song.

While where is my mind? works too well here, I guess any song that starts like this will have the same effect. Ice Ice Baby could potentially do the same thing as Can’t Touch This , though hopefully the bit wakes you up before “Stop! Hammer time.

Either way, it’s a stupid Android and Google Pixel quirk and while there’s little risk it will affect you, it’s a good social ad to check out the songs on your wake up playlist.