Why didn't a low glucose alarm call me?

Alarms & alerts  ·  Updated 2026-07-01

Sugalarm calls your emergency contacts by phone on a low. If a low happened and a phone didn't ring, work through these in order — the first causes are the most common.

1. Your phone sent the call to voicemail

This is the most common cause. Twilio dialed the number fine, but the phone routed it straight to voicemail without ringing.

• Silence Unknown Callers is on (iPhone: Settings → Phone). Unknown numbers go to voicemail with no ring.
• A Focus or Do Not Disturb mode is on.

Tell-tale sign: you got a voicemail of the alert, but the phone never actually rang.

2. The contact isn't set up to be called

• Not verified. An unverified number is never dialed. In Settings → Contacts, look for the "Verified" badge; re-send the code if it's missing.
• Voice calls toggled off on that contact (this matters for plain lows).
• Wrong or old phone number saved on the contact.

3. It was a plain low, and you're not first in line

The two severities call differently:

• Low calls contacts one at a time, in order. Contact #2 only rings if #1 doesn't answer or press 1. So if you're #3, you won't be called unless the people ahead of you miss it.
• Urgent low calls everyone at once, and keeps re-calling everyone every 5 minutes until glucose recovers.

4. Level opt-in (notify levels)

For plain lows, a contact is only called for the levels they've enabled in their notify-level chips. Urgent low ignores this — it calls every verified contact regardless.

5. It recovered or was handled first

• Glucose came back in range before the next call cycle — the repeats stop (that's intended).
• The alarm was acknowledged or snoozed in the app. A snooze pauses the calls for one cycle.

How to confirm what happened

• Test call: Settings → Contacts → Test call on your own contact. If that rings, the calling system works and it's a phone-side issue (cause #1).
• Twilio call log shows each dial's outcome: completed (connected), no-answer (rang, unanswered), or a machine/voicemail result (went to voicemail — cause #1).