A few days ago I was woken up in the middle of the night by the HomePod mini in my bedroom. It issued three alarm-like tones in a row and repeated them three or four times. Loud. Very loud.

It definitely got my attention.

I had not set an alarm of any sort. In fact, I’ve never set an alarm on the HomePod, so I had no idea what was happening. 

I got up and unplugged the thing and tried to get back to sleep.

That morning I searched the internet to see if anyone else had a similar problem but I couldn’t find anything.

So I left a message on the Apple support forum and then called Apple support to see if they could offer a suggestion.

The person I spoke to at Apple was very helpful, but she had never heard of anything like that happening ever before, nor could she find anything like it by doing a search of her support documents. She had me reset the HomePod, and she said she was keeping the support ticket open so that should I ever have the problem again, I could reference it.

Then it occurred to me that the alarm had been so loud it might have disturbed my neighbor, so I checked with her, but she said she hadn’t heard anything.

Finally, I got to thinking. What if I had dreamed the whole thing?

I mean, I had dreamed an alarm going off before that had woken me up. Maybe this was another instance of an alarming dream.

But that time I had sort of realized it might be a dream right away. This time it really didn’t seem like a dream, and the alarm kept ringing for some time even after I was awake. Or at least that’s what it seemed like.

Could I have dreamed it?

Well, I’m keeping the HomePod mini unplugged for the time being.

If it issues another alarm while it’s unplugged, then it has to be a dream.

Right?