Alarmy: Loud Alarm Clock,Sleep 4+

As a chronic oversleeper and someone who has an endless list of alarms in my clock app just for waking up, I have tried numerous strategies. Getting enough sleep helps, sunlight too. I’ve tried setting different alarm tones so I don’t get used to it. Alas it still happens. I still sleep through class and often I don’t even feel like the one pressing stop. Like that’s unconscious me who has no regard for the consequences. Anyway this is all to say that this app forces the decision back into my hands. It’s not a cure all, but it wakes you up and stimulates your brain enough that it’s actually you. If I sleep in it’s because I choose to get back into bed after getting out and sobering up from sleep. You can make it as difficult as you want to incentivize you not to go back to sleep. Just make sure you don’t accidentally leave an alarm on after since they’re hard to turn off if it goes off in class, which is typically a pro but can be a con with user error. You can always resort to deleting it. My tips: if you resort to deleting it rather than waking up, disable deleting in parental controls on your phone to make that just as difficult. I like to use voice alarms because my mind doesn’t register that as an alarm noise. Also the picture mode can be a little finicky so I’d stick with QR codes personally unless you can guarantee lightning conditions and such.

i’ve been using this app since high school after my apple alarm randomly stopped going off some mornings making me miss the bus. it was extremely helpful for those early mornings after staying up way too late to finish an overdue assignment…it has extra loud alarm options that get louder the longer you let them go off, and they’re so annoying that you’ll literally do anything (including getting up) to make it stop. it also has lots of different options for wake up missions, such as memory games and math problems you have to complete before you can shut off the alarm. overall it is an extremely reliable alarm app, as long as it is open in the background of your apps it will go off.
however after the recent update the app has introduced morning messages after the alarm is turned off…it will pop up with something encouraging to start off your day. they started pretty normal, things like “you can do this” or “believe in yourself”, but i think they’re trying too hard to be creative because they have been almost creepy the last few mornings. a couple days ago it read “don’t push yourself too hard to be happy :)” and this morning it said “i’m going to miss you.” what’s going on? is alarmy closing their app? am i going somewhere? like idk is it just me or are these lovely good morning messages becoming rather ominous? needless to say they are very confusing at 5:30AM, but also somewhat entertaining because i never know what i’m gonna get.

I absolutely love this app. I cannot remember a time in my life where I would actually wake up and stay up. I opted to pay for the very reasonable premium subscription after I tested out the free trial. The physical challenges force me to wake up and get out of bed, in addition to starting my day off with some nice exercise. Potentially my favorite feature, amongst all the great options and settings, is the ability to select your alarm tone to ‘random.’ If I hear the same alarm every morning, my brain will eventually tune it out, and it won’t wake me up anymore. Even the most obnoxious alarm tone Apple offers (you know the one) will not do anything. But with the random option, a different alarm tone will play every morning, and will only get louder and louder. If you decide to go for premium, a great feature is the ‘wake up check’ where they will prompt you to make sure you’re still awake, and you have to select ‘yes’ within a certain amount of time, otherwise you have to do your whole wake up mission again. There’s also great alarm ‘power ups’ that you can choose from if you need extra motivation to get up in the morning. I never thought I would see the day where one alarm wakes me up, but I’m glad to finally be here. If you’re a chronic late sleeper, there’s not an app or alarm I can recommend more.