Bell Toll Notification Sound at 8AM, 9AM, 2PM, 8PM, 9PM

[Sumo813]

Sometime around the beginning of May, my S25 Ultra began to make a 'bell toll' notification at 8am, 9am, 2pm, 8pm, and 9pm. It also often randomly goes off several mins after one of those times. It does this when all sounds and notifications are completely muted (an issue when in a meeting). I have tried looking at notifications at those times to see what app may be causing this, and nothing correlates. Nothing in notification history shows up. And again, this only started around the beginning of May. I really need to find what system setting is causing this, as it seems to be device related.

[realaud · Accepted solution]

Had you downloaded any new apps around that time? Download Good Lock/Nice Catch and turn on "sound history".  Once the sound history is activated, return to Nice Catch, tap "sound history" and you will get a list of all sounds and it will tell you which app it came from.  You may have picked up some malware that's causing this phenomenon. Make sure app protection is on in Security & Privacy.

[Pianodude58]

Nice Catch is awesome

[Sumo813]

I honestly can't recall going back to then. I tried to pull the install json but there's just too much information in that between different devices tied to the google account. So it's possible. And I'm sure there were updates to apps around that time as well, also including a device update. 

I'll have to download the good lock (I couldn't find it as 'Nice Catch') and see if that helps.

There was another response here asking if I tried safe mode. I have not, but can. Though, that won't help with identifying which app, just that it's an app. 

For protection, I do have it enabled. I also utilize bitdefender on the device. It hasn't caught anything.

[realaud]

Good Lock has many modules. Nice Catch is one of them.  The Good Lock app is used to customize various features of your phone not available in the regular settings.  It's modular because not everyone needs or wants the same customization options so it reduces bloat if people only download what they want or need, and it makes it easy to update individual modules.  It's in the Galaxy Store, as it's an official Galaxy app, developed by a Samsung team of engineers.

[Sumo813]

Thank you. Found it and it looks like a pretty nice tool. I've enabled the sound history. So, we'll see what it captures at 8pm and 9pm.

[Sumo813]

As I suspected, it is the device. It is showing 'System UI' and has "just before (June 4 8:00:10 PM) Ringtone" under. Will see if the next notifications show the same. But then the question is, where is this set and how do I disable it?

[realaud]

If you long press on the item, you will have an option to view the app details screen. I do not believe you can disable the notifications without it disabling all norifications, as it appears to be the system. I checked the app notification permissions and they cannot be turned off, but they can be set to silent. You need to enable notification categories to do this. Settings/notifications/advanced settings/manage notification categories for all apps. Turning this to silent may or may not affect your other notifications. I don't know for sure. Are you sure you don't have a recurring alarm set? Alarms will always override any mute settings on the phone.

Have you cleared your phone's cache partition? Try that and see if it goes away. If you've already done that and it didn't help, you can try using text help through the support tab of the members app or doing a factory reset and restoring your backup.

[Sumo813]

thank you. I'll give this a shot.

[Sumo813]

I believe I've identified the true offending app. This morning's notification at 9am only had one app showing in Nice Catch. The app was the 'Simple Bible Daily Verse Alarm' app. I've never actually opened up and set up anything with this app. However, in Nice Catch, it lists it as an alarm. It was also one of several that showed in Nice Catch at 8pm and 9pm last night. I'll know for certain at 2pm if it doesn't go off. But I believe it caught it. I looked the app up and see a similar review in the Play store regarding the sound notification. Thank you again for your assistance.