iOS 14: daily automation not running

Question

I have set up a simple automation to run a Shortcut at 6am every morning. If I test the shortcut, it works. If I set the time for [10 mins from now], it works.

However, it never seems to run for 6am where:

• The phone is plugged into power
• The phone is on WiFi
• The phone is in Do Not Disturb
• The phone hasn’t been unlocked since I went to bed (11pm ish)

I don’t think the power/WiFi/DND make any difference but is there something in iOS that stops automations running if the phone hasn’t been unlocked or used for some period of time?

I see exactly the same issue with a totally different automation that’s supposed to run on my iPad … it runs about once per month if I am lucky and I am wondering if those are times when I had used the iPad in the past hour or so.

Is this a bug or is there something that stops daily automations that I’ve missed in the documentation?

Update - here’s how I created it:

Answer 1

Whatever was stopping this from working has gone away - it’s started working without me changing anything 🤷

Answer 2

I believe this is a feature. Depending on what automation you do, you may need to have it run in the HomeKit controller so it triggers from a device that is running and cleared for background tasks.

You can certainly report it to Apple as a bug, but everything I see from power management, automations are designed to be user triggered or relevant to the device in a near term sleep state, not that it wakes itself up and runs work in the background.

I would expect it to run once you wake the device after 6 am, though. That would be worth a bug if the task never triggers.

I’ve had an automation run each day for a week, so I’m not so sure this is a bug at all in iOS 14.