macOS Alarm Fix: Shortcuts Workaround | Generated by AI

Home 2026.06

Summary

The Root Problem

On macOS 26, Clock.app alarms are managed entirely by the mobiletimerd daemon via XPC (com.apple.MobileTimer.alarmserver). The daemon keeps alarms in-memory. Neither the plist nor the SQLite database is the source of truth — the daemon IS.

What doesn’t work (all tested and confirmed):

  1. Writing to ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mobiletimerd.plist — daemon ignores it, Clock.app shows “No Alarms”
  2. Writing to ~/Library/Group Containers/group.com.apple.mobiletimerd/local.sqlite — same result
  3. Calling MTAlarmManager.addAlarm_() via pyobjc — XPC rejected: "not entitled"
  4. Compiled Swift binary calling MobileTimer framework — same "not entitled" error
  5. Donating MTCreateAlarmIntent via INInteraction — donates to Siri suggestions but doesn’t create the alarm

The entitlements are Apple-private. Only Apple-signed processes (Clock.app, Shortcuts.app, Siri) can talk to mobiletimerd.

What DOES Work

Shortcuts.app has the correct entitlements and can create alarms. The shortcuts CLI can run shortcuts:

shortcuts run "shortcut-name" --input-path /tmp/input.txt

What I’ve Done

  1. Created and signed a .shortcut file — discovered that .shortcut is a plain binary plist (not a ZIP), and shortcuts sign accepts it
  2. Imported ww-create-alarm-signed into Shortcuts.app — it exists but has no actions
  3. Cleaned up alarm.py — rewrote it to use SQLite (correct approach conceptually, but insufficient without the daemon)

What’s Needed (One-Time Manual Setup)

The user needs to add a “Create Alarm” action to the shortcut in Shortcuts.app:

  1. Open Shortcuts.app → find “ww-create-alarm-signed”
  2. Click to edit → add action → search “Create Alarm” (from Clock app)
  3. Configure it to accept Shortcut Input as text (format: HH:MM label)
  4. Save

Then update alarm.py to call:

subprocess.run(["shortcuts", "run", "ww-create-alarm-signed", "--input-path", tmpfile])

Want me to delete the empty shortcut, create a fresh one with proper setup instructions, and update alarm.py to use the shortcuts run approach? You’d just need to do a 2-minute manual step in Shortcuts.app to add the “Create Alarm” action.

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