The standard alarm clock just works. You set an alarm and it wakes you up at the specified time. The minimal functionality of the built-in application provides a huge scope of possibilities for developers. They, in turn, create excellent alternative alarm clocks for iPhone that help you fall into the arms of Morpheus faster, sleep more efficiently and wake up easier.
Alarm clock - effective sleep
A simple and effective alarm clock, proven over the years. It helps you wake up in the right cycle so you feel refreshed in the morning, even if you can't sleep for long.
To get started, tell the alarm clock about your age, lifestyle and choose whether you are a morning person or a night owl. With this data, the program will know better about your sleep phases and select best time for going to bed/waking up.
The application works in two modes:
When is the best time to go to bed?
You indicate when you need to wake up, and the alarm clock suggests three optimal options time to go to bed.
When to wake up if I go to bed now
The application provides you with the 6 best time periods for your body to wake up in the light sleep phase.
Rise
One of the simplest and most beautiful alarm clocks in App Store.
It is convenient to set the signal in the program by dragging the slider, which is accompanied by pleasant animations and a changing background depending on the time of day. When you have chosen the time, swipe to the side and the alarm is turned on.
For those who like to fall asleep to music, you can create a playlist right in the application and set the timer to auto-sleep.
If you set multiple alarms, I recommend purchasing additional features from Rise. They cost $0.99 and allow you to set signals on different time and days of the week and offer a collection of melodies that are pleasant to wake up to.
Sleep Cycle
An application for those who want to sleep as efficiently as possible.
Sleep Cycle uses the accelerometer in the iPhone. While you sleep, it records every movement to wake you up at the optimal phase, as well as analyze the quality and duration of your sleep. Data is synchronized with the Health application.
Sleep Cycle can wake you up at a specific time or within an interval you set from 10 to 90 minutes. And don’t be afraid to sleep half an hour less. It is not they who decide, but the phase of sleep in which they woke up.
The program not only effectively wakes you up, but also helps you fall asleep easier by playing relaxing nature sounds or white noise. And before you go to bed, you can note events (drank coffee, had a hard day, played sports) to better understand their impact on sleep.
Sleep Better
The application from the creators of Runtastic, using a set of features, monitors your sleep, its quality and allows you to record your dreams.
In the free version, Sleep Better wakes you up at the optimal phase, and also analyzes the quality and duration of sleep and sends the data to Health. If that's enough, then ok, but there's more full version. It costs $1.99 and offers a number of useful features that definitely won’t hurt:
- Advanced alarm settings allow you to change the wake-up window and the time for which the alarm is snooze
- Collection of more than 30 melodies + the ability to choose your own
- The ability to read recorded dreams and analyze their nature
- Ability to specify events (late dinner, workout, etc.) and track their impact on sleep
- Tracking sleep quality under different phases of the moon
- Advanced sleep statistics and filters for detailed analysis
- No advertising
Recent studies by Japanese scientists have shown that lack of sleep provokes cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and obesity. Therefore, it is important to monitor both the duration of sleep and its quality. The first point is clear, but what about the second? Owners of Apple smartwatches can breathe a sigh of relief, because an apple watch alarm clock has already been developed that monitors a person’s movements at night. Let's see how this is useful.
What data does a smartwatch collect?
Smart watches determine sleep quality based on the following indicators:
- pulse frequency (with its help, phases are distinguished);
- human activity;
- pressure.
Observation will help determine at home how effective the rest was. Depending on the result, you can draw conclusions and improve your schedule in the future. The body will thank you with excellent health and high performance.
Popular apps
Smart Alarm is not installed by default on your apple watch, so you must download the app from the App Store. The most popular program is Sleep++. It is easy to use; to start analyzing your sleep, just put the smart watch on your hand and launch the application. Upon awakening, you will need to stop the process, after which the phases of sleep and its quality will be displayed on the screen in the form of graphs.
Sleep ++ stores information not only up-to-date, but here you can find data for the past week, month and even year. Statistics are presented in charts, so it’s easy to see progress to understand whether the situation has improved or worsened compared to the previous period. There is a smart alarm clock for apple watch, if you install it, it will ring in the right phase, which will allow you to feel great even on Monday morning. Another one useful feature– sleep tracking during flights, a smart application recognizes fluctuations associated with time zones.
AutoSleep and Sleep Tracker programs are also popular. The operating algorithm is the same; the time spent falling asleep is additionally counted. Plus they have a clear price advantage.
The most important part of any day is the morning hours. How you set yourself up in the morning, what kind of attitude you give, this will be your mood for the whole day. A simple banal truth that not everyone understands.
The morning starts with the sounds of an alarm clock, and they can become a source of stress. For example, the default iPhone ringer (radar) is alarming, harsh and even a little annoying, which easily causes negative emotions and can disrupt the internal clock. Being forcibly awakened by such a sound is real torture.
We found interesting replacements for the standard alarm clock, thanks to which the morning will be good, and this is a convincing guarantee of a successful day.
Dawn Chorus
For whom: For those who love nature
Price: For free
pros: Possibility of creating a custom trill
Minuses: No Russian language, modest functionality
[Download on App Store]
Waking up to the pleasant chirping of birds sounds interesting, doesn’t it?
Developed with the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, the Dawn Chorus app allows you to create a custom tune by selecting the sounds of your singing. 20 different birds(thrushes, sparrows, woodpeckers, etc.). You can read a separate short article about each “singer”.
The application works adequately in silent mode.
Sleep Cycle alarm clock
For whom: For those who believe in science
Price: For free
pros: Excellent advanced functionality
Minuses: Paid subscription (149 RUR/month)
[Download on App Store]
One of the pioneers in the field of dream analysis with using iPhone. An intelligent alarm clock that can analyze your sleep and wake you up only when easy time sleep phases. The app measures movement and noise throughout the night using sensors in the smartphone, thereby determining which phase of sleep a person is in.
For example, if you set your alarm for 7:30 a.m., the app will track all movements and will wake you up at the moment when the sleeper is most restless between 7:00 and 7:30. You can set your own time period at which the application will wake you up.
Sleep Cycle is able to track all phases of sleep throughout the night, thereby analyzing and maintaining statistics and graphs of habits, quality and average amount of daily sleep.
Unfortunately, the app still doesn't have Apple Watch support. With such a price tag it would be logical.
Alarm clock “Good morning”
The cutely designed alarm clock is capable (like the previous application) of detecting different stages of sleep, as well as providing sleep statistics and a weather forecast for the day every morning.
We also note special sounds that promotes sleep(the sound of a fire, rain, ocean) and will play until the person falls asleep. The main thing is that when using this alarm clock, the smartphone is connected to the charger; the application will easily “eat up” the battery overnight.
Alarmy – Alarm clock
The main feature of the application is the methods for muting the alarm sound.
To do this you need to complete a certain task. It could be arithmetic problem, which “will stir up” a sleeping brain or a requirement to take a certain photo that will force you to get out of bed. There are many ways, everyone will find the best one for themselves.
Note a large number of settings (you can even choose the difficulty mathematical equation) and color customization of the interface.
Share in the comments what music, what program (or gadget) you use to wake up to.
Already from the first version, the Apple Watch helped you wake up on time using the smart alarm clock built into the Apple Watch interface.
Settings
The procedure for setting the required wake-up time takes exactly ten seconds and consists of three steps:
- Call the main menu, find the “Alarm Clock” application (no need to link to iPhone);
- Then click “add” and indicate the appropriate time (to select hours and minutes, you need to click on the required square with information, and then scroll the Digital Crown to get the exact “hit”);
- To save, click “Select” and exit the menu. By the way, when you return to the “Alarm Clock” with ready-made settings, additional options for editing will appear - repetition frequency, design, music played and even days for “playing alerts”.
The procedure described above is the same for all Apple Watch series and will definitely not be a problem for either beginners or professionals. But what to do in situations when you want to wake up not to the boring sounds of the chosen melody and at a predetermined hour, but at the right moment for waking up, when you have to tear yourself away from the pillow not with bad mood, and with a feeling of pleasure?
Third party alarm apps
Third party developers specifically for operating system WatchOS offers a whole series of “smart alarm clocks” that adapt to the rhythm of each watch owner and allow you to wake up in the “REM” phase with “minimal losses”, and even to the sounds of randomly selected melodies, depicting both a morning in the forest and waking up nearby ocean. The only question is which assistants to pay attention to first, and therefore - short excursion to the App Store:
- – a fully automated tool for monitoring and analyzing sleep, which helps and healthy image life" literally without getting out of bed. main idea AutoSleep is a chance to completely avoid settings. The alarm clock does not even have buttons - rare adjustments are made from the iPhone, statistics are also collected and studied there, which the developers present in the form of informative graphs, diagrams and even text conclusions (sorry for English language), carefully retelling what lack of sleep will lead to and how it will help healthy sleep. The asking price is $3. Additional advantages: no advertising;
- – a freely distributed sleep tracker, combined with an alarm clock and capable of both recording data about the current rest and displaying statistics for the week, month and even year. As in the case of AutoSleep, the developers from Cross Forward Consulting, LLC have provided a portion of advice for everyone. Although the information is focused around some common truths, it can sometimes shed light on some of the nuances of sleep (when to fall asleep, how to wake up, and why it is important not to immediately grab gadgets in your hands and do the obligatory morning routine);
- . A smart “pillow” analyzes your sleep, allows you to set an alarm for the required time, and easily helps you set up various ways for awakening (standard vibration, sounds). The interface is intuitive and informative; even beginners will not have any problems. An additional advantage is free distribution without advertising or subscriptions (you don’t even have to pay for music, which is extremely atmospheric). By the way, the developers offer to study statistics (for a day, month or even a year) both on a watch using a special widget, and on a smartphone through detailed statistics with graphs and tips. At strong desire the developers propose to expand the start-up powers of the tracker with the help of a paid subscription, which stores the data for eternity on servers, and even allows songs from Apple Music to be installed as wake-up ringtones;
- – a free tool for monitoring sleep, “proper rest” and lightning-fast access to all the energy in the world. Before you start monitoring dreams, the developers strongly recommend that you understand the settings and choose a measurement method (automatic or manual, when you press a button) and a place to upload statistics - inner memory, cloud storage. After mandatory preparation, the instrument will adapt to the activity of each watch owner and will help achieve the highest accuracy (inaccuracies will arise at first).
The main problem with “smart alarm clocks” for Apple Watch is the need to keep the watch on your wrist. And, while some owners cope with such a responsibility, others suffer inconvenience (especially if an iron strap weighs on their hand). If such a nuance does not spoil the mood and looks harmless, then the helpers described above will definitely help you finish what you started and finally get some sleep!
Smart alarm clocks and devices that track sleep quality are one of the controversial phenomena. On the one hand, many say that they really work. I can even confirm this. On the other hand, they do not always work as we would like. And the need to connect your smartphone to charge overnight makes them too inconvenient.
Unfortunately, the Pillow app is not without the typical shortcomings of smart alarm clocks. The smartphone still needs to be left connected to the charger and kept near your head overnight. But if that doesn't bother you and you're looking for a sleep tracking app, then Pillow might be a better choice.
Pillow has many modes: standard sleep, sleep with sound recording, several modes short nap and others. After setting the alarm, the application turns off the backlight and turns all elements black. If you wake up in the middle of the night to check the time, the screen won't burn your eyes out.
Before and after you wake up, you can make notes about what you did before bed and how you felt afterwards. This is necessary in order to evaluate the quality of sleep and everything that affects it in the future. Unfortunately, not all features are free. Here's why you'll have to purchase an unlock for 279 rubles:
- Full access to audio recordings.
- HealthKit integration.
- Tips for improving sleep quality.
- Detailed statistics and their export.
- Additional ringtones.
There are many restrictions, but the features you unlock are optional. The functions of a smart alarm clock and sleep tracking are also available in the free version, and this is exactly what is required from such applications.
