Don’t blame Cortana, disable 3rd party alarms before setting hers

By Sam Sabri
last updated

Yesterday we posted about folks being unable to set an alarm using Cortana. They’d try and meet error code 8000ffff. It undoubtedly made a lot of you frustrated as you played around with Cortana. Soft resets and hard resets didn’t fix the problem. What was going on? It’s most likely third-party alarm apps messing with Cortana on Windows Phone 8.1. Details below.

This is just a quick follow up to yesterday’s post and a little FYI on how to fix it. The cause appears to be third-party alarm apps and whether or not they have alarms set. Removing any alarms set in those apps themselves seems to alleviate the issues. A bit of a bummer, especially since apps like 627.am are really nice.

Let us know if you can get Cortana to set alarms after removing the alarms in your third-party alarm apps.

Source: MSDN (opens in new tab)

Thanks for the heads up Justin! 

Sam Sabri
Sam Sabri
91 Comments
  • I have Cortana call me "Dude"
  • Congratulations?
  • Lol
  • For what?
  • I don't have any 3rd party alarm apps, and yet I can't have Cortana set alarms for me.
  • It didn't work
  • I works for me fine. Yet I don't have any 3rd party alarm apps too: )
  • Wow
  • Ummm. Amm..aa.zzzz...iiii.nnnnn.gggg
  • I have her call me sex panther
  • Should I call a moderator?
  • Check your auto text replies!
  • haha why?
  • I wrote "Atif" (my name) and she obviously couldn't pronounce it. But when she asked how to pronounce it properly, I wrote Master Chief. Now everytime someone texts what's up Atif, Cortana says What's up Master Chief. :D
  • That owns tho comment thread!!!!
  • She don't say any of my names for some reason
  • Change your name maybe?
  • No I don't want to, it should be able to say my name, it's not hard.
  • Whenever I start Cortana using the search key, I only see a text like 'Yay, It's Nilesh. How can I help?' and it's variations. My name is there but she never says anything. Is she supposed to actually say my name? (I will watch the video demo if I can find one)
  • Sorry, I did not realise that you were confused about who you are :/
  • Lol
  • she called me 'chief' instead of my real name ;)
  • Yeah same here. I wondered why she never said my name. She asked me if she pronounced it correctly and I replied "sounds good". Hmmmmm
  • Have no third party alarm app and still have the error. This is not the solution.
  • Same here
  • It's definitely something you have done, it works flawlessly on my 920...check more!!!
  • It's definitely not something I've done.
  • I take what I stated previously back. It was indeed due to third party apps. In my case I had to uninstall Avirall Timer Pro and Countdown apps. :) Now Cortana can set alarms without any issues.
  • Mine works flawlessly. I asked her to "cancel my alarm" and she replied with "which one?"
    Then I asked "show me my alarms" and she did. I am truly starting to love her ♡.♡
  • i ask her to delete all of my alarms and she replied "wich one" and not even a list of them. Wish they implement that because my alarms get real messy, real fast.
  • There's definitely room for improvement.
  • Same here
  • I know it had to be something else because mine works perfectly.
  • Why doesn't Cortana voice my name when I turn her on?
  • Maybe you're not properly turning her on...
  • (applause)
  • :D
  • +Icon
  • W-o-w.
  • She doesn't do that for me either...is she supposed to?
  • Need to work out on your foreplay bro..  
  • I want her to call me "father"!
  • I ask Cortana to set my alarm for 9am and it went through just fine. Awesome
  • And you can also ask cortana to cancel that alarm. "Cancel my 9am alarm"  
  • Me too. Bitch won't say my name, even if I change it from Brian to mark...
  • I had a different alarm problem today. I ask Cortana to set my morning alarm which she did but it didn't go off! It showed it was set in the alarm app it just never went off. Made me a bit late for work.
  • The same alarm issue has happened to me. If you can't trust an alarm to go off at the appointed time, they aren't worth having.
  • I don't even have Cortana! Sucks.. Norway
  • Cortana won't tell me name upon startup. Also the only setup question was my name and not the other following questions. Anyway to reset/reinstall Cortana.
  • Activate Cortana with her App icon and she will go through the questions setup with you. The search button will not have you go through that process... from my personal experience that is.
  • She just set my alarm - works great! Lumia 928. I don't have any third party alarm apps. Why would need another alarm app if the OS already has a native one?
  • The issue is to people who had third party alarms before 8.1..this is causing a conflict for us with Cortana that should not be happening there is no need for a third party alarm with Cortana but for us that had them prior to 8.1 installation... Its an issue
  • I just set alarm using Cortana and it worked and showed up in alarms. Typed "set alarm at 5:30pm" and got the confirmation back right away and saw it in alarms as well. Btw, using swipe keyboard for this and it is just awesome.
  • You have to ask Cortana to set the specific time and it will be set as a alarm! Don't add the word alarm to your request!
  • i have used "set alarm at 5am" and works fine. also "wake me up at 6am" works.
  • Mine is working fine...8.1 is the shit
  • Cortana is beta....
  • No problems here
  • I asked her to turn on another alarm and she did. I then asked her to turn them off one at a time and she turned them off too. Wp8.1 is awesome. Lumia 928.
  • There has to be an underlying issue..a 3rd party app should not cause Cortana not to function properly... I also have no 3rd party alarms now as I have removed them and I am still having the same problem...although all other features work as expected...
  • It worked for me! Thanks!
  • It worked after i removed design me app :-) so i think any app that works on alarms or calendar or anything similar should be removed.
  • how do i get her to call my name, cos she doesn't
  • and i uninstalled my third party app and alarm works fine now....thxx for the article
  • Here is ok !
  • I can confirm: I am able to set alarms normally with Cortana. If I create an alarm with an app I created (NAPT), then try to create an alarm with Cortana, it fails with the error 8000ffff. When I turn off the NAPT alarm Cortata is able to set alarms without error It would be nice to know what the root of the problem is so that I can patch my app and push out an update.
  • So many complaints by people who should not be using a preview release makes you wonder why they don't make the release more limited.
  • Agreed. I don't think they understand what developer preview means.
  • Awesome.
  • Tiny do was my problem. At least Cortana does the job.
  • She sets my alarms but I use the OEM alarm and that's it. Does she say your name when you up it up?
  • Does she tell you that another app has already set the alarm? She is not so smart after all? lol
  • well i dont have problems setting alarms with cortana..
  • Let me tell you what i observed, when internet was off she was unable to set the alarm but when internet was on she successfully set the alarm
  • Mwah ha ha ha! I'm a firm advocate of saying, "If I don't have to install an app, why should I if the phone already has it?" ok maybe not in those words exactly, but the more apps I find I install to a phone, the slower and more buggy it gets. Ain't broke, don't fix it, maybe? :)
  • any disadvantage of changing region?? many apps use location to work rght? help!
  • thats what your gps chip inside your phone is for. not disadvantages whatsoever only you might not get the region restricted apps in store. (ive been using us as region since 7004 on an optimus 7)
  • Wow.. It's working now after I deleted one alerting app
  • Mine is working pretty good.
  • Cortana working nice with default alarm app... I haven't installed any third party alarm since preview update... It seems just like two antivirus programs on a single pc... Lol
  • Lumia 620 here. The only thing I have installed, time-wise, is ChronoMts and Cortana handles all of my alarms without complaints. In addition, and offtopic, after having a HORRIBLE battery life I did a hard reset, restored, tinkered with Battery Saver and background tasks and now I'm holding steady at 100% for a whole hour, despite using my phone for WhatsApp and app install occasionaly. It will probably drop in a minute or so but I had 0,5% / min drain before the reset so this is great!
  • try checking e mail settings.. roll it back to hourly check.. it helps
  • No problems at all, alarms are set correctly....
  • Can Cortana alarm start playing music?
  • Reminder: Delete your older ones. If you tell Cortana to turn on your current alarm, it will create a new one. The one created by Cortana can NOT be renamed, or you'll have to do it over.
  • Using 627.AM. Got the error. Turned off the 627.AM's alarms.. Cortana was happy and quick about setting me a new alarm.
  • Well, don't blame the alarm apps either, they are just using the Alarms API provided by the phone.
  • Works fine to me.
  • Ih think everyone is forgetting that this is a beta it isn't complete that is why it's called a developer preview
  • Thank you, it`s working  
  • After uninstalling 627 it worked. Able to set and remove alarms!