PSA: “Until Next Alarm” feature missing for many users due to apparent bug

A curious bug is afflicting users who relied on the “Until next alarm” feature of Android Marshmallow.

Numerous users are reporting that the “Until next alarm” feature, normally a part of the Do Not Disturb mode on Android 6.0.1, has suddenly and mysteriously gone missing.

Nexus 6P users over on Reddit first noticed the problem, but this doesn’t appear to be a device-specific issue.

To clarify for readers who haven’t used this functionality or don’t have Android 6.0.1, “Until next alarm” allows you to silence all notifications until the first alarm. This comes in handy when you want to turn off all notifications at night, but have them turn back on as soon as the alarm goes off in the morning.

The feature first appeared in the M preview, but it was removed from Android 6.0 Marshmallow, and it reappeared with the Android 6.0.1 update at the beginning of December.

Thanks to the sleuth work of several commenters over at Android Police, we think that this is a straightforward programming error. If that’s the case, the “Until next alarm” feature will return after January 1, though the bug may rear its head again in the future. That said, Google will probably issue a patch for the issue with the next update.

If you absolutely must have this feature back, you can try changing the system date to a date outside the December 25-January 1 interval.

Dates and times seem to be especially tricky for Google’s engineers. You may remember the embarrassing incident from 2012 when the entire month of December disappeared from Google’s People app. More recently, Android 6.0 broke the system clock for some users, though the rather important feature was fixed with Android 6.0.1.

Have you encountered this problem?