Alarm apps to start your day

No one needs to be grilled on the benefits of an early morning stroll. As much as it can work wonders for us, some of us are simply unable to adjust to an early morning schedule. 

Thanks to some of these wake-up apps, as they have been designed to literally throw you out of your bed if you fail them. Exploring the domains of some of the most popular wake-up apps and how they intrude into your territory of sleep and leisure. 

I Can’t Wake Up 

What if you have some eight wake up tasks to complete before you decide to fall back to sleep again. The tasks being finishing small games, doing some math, playing memory games, setting pics in the right order, repeating sequence, barcode scanning, rewriting, shaking, and matching the right options.

If you are thinking of quitting the alarm then it is not going to be an easy way out. Alarm quitting prevention does not let you turn off the alarm by switching the phone off or with a force stop unless and until you go through o a set of options designed to stop from quitting the alarm.

Now if you have somehow managed to get through the tasks, there comes an ‘awake’ test that puts you through another ordeal a few minutes later. This is to check if you are really awake or not, so mind you, it is not going to let you down anyway.

A set of free snoozes helps you set up the number of times you can snooze without completing your tasks. You can also set your holidays to let you awake at your pace on your off days. The music for alarm sounds can be sourced from ringtones, music files, and playlists. 

The app comes with a simple and user-friendly interface. An ad-free version of this app comes with in-app purchases.

Available on both android and iOS. 

Alarmy

Reviewed as one of the most popular and annoying apps in the world, this is one of the most rated apps in the world. If you detest being woken up early with that particularly bad habit of snoozing alarms then this is perfectly meant for you. It draws its name as one of the most annoying alarms from the list of tasks it uses to set you up. 

The morning task guarantees to wake you up and chases away the tardiness before you finish doing it. The difficulty level of the tasks can be adjusted to your requirements i.e from too easy to too difficult ones. You can decide the kind of activity your brain should go through to prepare yourself for the day.

Available on both Android and iOS.

Alarm clock Xtreme

A highly customisable app that comes with an inbuilt sleep tracker, stopwatch, and timer also has some alarm templates. It is loaded with some interesting themes designed to gently wake you up to your favourite music and prevent that accidental dismissal.

The obstacles that come in the way of dismissing the alarm are math problems, puzzles, captcha, barcode scanning, and much more to give your brain a good start with beginning the day. The alarm can detect your sleep pattern and assign tasks accordingly.

The stopwatch and timer can be set to limit or control your activities, say regulating your nap in the afternoon. You can choose to start your day with reminders for the most important task for the day, display upcoming events by syncing the weather forecast to plan your day meticulously. Easy setup of non-recurring alarms with a few taps is also possible. 

This app with more than 50 million downloads is free with android and is a must-have for heavy sleepers. 

Sleep as Android

This is another series of sleep tracker app analysing your sleep pattern to awake you gently to the optimal sounds of nature emulating the aura of a pleasant morning feel. It makes use of Sonar technology enabling touch-free ultrasonic sleep tracking. Imbued with soft natural sounds and lullabies it not just wakes you but also lulls you to deep natural sleep. 

It supports a number of smart wearables, doubling up as a utility-driven app. Pebble, Android Wear, Galaxy Gear, Google Fit, wear OS, Tizen based Samsung wearables are a few to mention. Smart bulb control with Philips HUE, IKEA, or others over IFTTT can be integrated with this app.

Sleep talk recording, snore detection, jet lag prevention, and sleep respiration trackers are a few of its hallmarks.

Sleep Cycle

Another series in the sleep tracker apps ‘Sleep Cycle’, has inbuilt sleep trackers to track your sleep activity from bedtime till morning, making the wake-up process a delightful experience. This app again ensures that you wake up during your light sleep phase, to energise you for the day. The sleep cycle monitor is instrumental in tracking and keeping the data to help you gain a good night’s sleep.

Sleep analysis with patented sound technology, sleep statistics with a daily sleep graph, a snooze with shaking or double tapping, and a customisable wake-up window are some of the attractive features of this app. The free version works well for a diligent wake-up app, unless you need long term sleep data to export or secure it online. 

This is exclusive for iOS.

AMdroid 

A powerful alarm for heavy sleepers, this app is set with multiple alarms, a timer, and a math problem for the android. It comes with some of the beautiful AMOLED themes ever seen in the wake-up apps. 

Alarm profiles from recurring to scheduled options are effective in gradually waking you up. By giving this app your location access, it can automatically dismiss an alarm sensing the place, mood, and location. That is it is mindful not to get in your way while partying with friends or colleagues. A more welcoming enhancement you can experience in this app is the integration of your calendar to avoid disturbing you on off days.

Tasks are customisable with a configurable post-alarm routine. The stats section gives you an interesting peek into your morning activity with a backup and restore of the settings. The sleep analyser stats further lets you redesign your alarm activity better.

It supports android wear with an interface loaded with attractive colours to give your routine that much-needed boost, to begin with. 

Apps like ‘I can’t wake up’ are found to be more effective on android than on apple. There are a couple of interesting wakeup apps like the ‘Rooster’, said to be the first social app, waking you up to some notes and fascinating quotes; and the ‘Speak to Snooze’ app which can be controlled without having to touch. They come in handy, and even with limited functions serve the purpose well. 

These app-driven tasks are much rewarding in that they help in achieving one of technology’s most challenging tasks in raising the bars of human productivity and efficiencies.

By Shaibana Sherafudheen

Shaibana holds a Masters in Computer Applications and juggles the roles of a professional, wife, mum, homemaker and devoted friend to all, effortlessly. A marketing professional with more than 15 years experience, who enjoys reading, writing and a bit of gardening. She lives with her family in Kerala, in the vibrant city of Kochi, which provides ample scope for chasing one’s dreams.