I Haven’t Pressed Snooze Since Downloading This Alarm Clock App

Some people start their morning by pressing snooze, including me. It’s so easy to turn off your alarm and delay it for nine more minutes, or sleep through it entirely as you continue your blissful slumber. Eventually, you’ll drag yourself out of bed but it’s never easy or fun to get up, especially if you’re a heavy sleeper.

Heavy sleepers often need a little something more to stir them, which is why there are alarm clock apps that force you to get up and complete memory puzzles, math problems, or movements for your ringer to turn off. One of the most popular is Alar.my, a viral alarm clock app that’s a favorite of over-sleepers everywhere. It has 190,000 positive ratings in the Apple store and over 140 million posts about it on TikTok.

Creator @melsellsfl is one of those fans. In a 2023 TikTok she said she used to set a series of alarms that went off every three minutes for an hour and a half before she’d actually get up. To start her day more efficiently, she eventually downloaded Alar.my, and she immediately appreciated the way it forced her to wake up on the very first ring. “I do have to warn you, this app is violent,” she said. “You won’t be happy about it, but you will get up.”

Not only does Alar.my make it less likely that you’ll fall back asleep, but it can also help you feel less groggy. As a poor sleeper, big-time napper, and pro bed rotter, I wanted to give it a try.

Here’s What Alar.my Can Do

Alar.my is a free app that aims to wake you up on the first alarm, instead of the 20th. If you struggle to stir with traditional alarm clocks on your bedside table, or if the ring ring ring of your iPhone doesn’t do the trick, this app might be a good bet.

You’ll start by setting your bedtime and ideal wakeup time, and then you’ll choose which sound you’d like to wake up to, as well as the task (or tasks) you’d like to complete. The app offers various “missions” to choose from. You can do a series of math problems, play a memory game, or shake your phone vigorously for a few seconds.

Once the alarm goes off it won’t stop ringing until you finish your mission. There’s no chance that you’ll accidentally mute it, either. Any attempt to turn off the alarm before completing the tasks is completely ignored thanks to Alar.my’s anti-snooze feature.

According to the app, the sounds used to wake you up — whether it’s peaceful bird chirps, a blaring jingle, or even an annoying alarm sound — are said to shake your brain out of deep sleep in a way that helps you avoid sleep inertia, or the grogginess that’s tough to overcome in the morning. If you like, you can also play your own music, record a message to yourself to wake up to, or browse a library of other tunes.

As a bonus, the app has a snore sound detector and sleep tracker. If you leave it running throughout the night, Alar.my will listen in and record your snores and stirs to determine how well you slept. It presents you with a sleep score in the morning and you can also rate how well you slept with a series of smiley faces.

This is a helpful way to keep track of your rest, especially if you’ve been having trouble falling or staying asleep. In the morning, you’ll also see how many times you let the alarm ring before you successfully completed your mission. That’s your “sleep latency” score.

Worried you’ll climb back into bed after completing your task? Turn on the “wake-up check” and it’ll start the alarm and missions all over again a few minutes later. For the super-heavy sleepers out there, you can pay $7.49/month for more features, like the app’s “Extra Loud Effect” which plays a blaring alarm if you’re unresponsive after 40 seconds.

You can also pay for a Volume Increase feature and a Time Reminder that reads the time out loud for every minute your alarm rings, as a way to guilt you out of bed. Like TikToker @melsellsfl said, this app is about waking you up by any means necessary.

Trying The Alar.my App

Real talk? I’m a very light sleeper. I take forever to fall asleep and I often wake up multiple times throughout the night, so come morning I’m usually pretty darn exhausted. Usually, I’ll get up, guzzle coffee, and go on with my day. But other times, I’ll happily stay asleep with my alarm on snooze.

I knew I had to have Alar.my on my phone for the days when I absolutely could not risk sleeping in, especially after I saw all the testimonies on TikTok. To start, I chose the memory game mission, since I figured it would be a good way to jog my brain and get me out of my blankets.

I don’t always lack physical energy in the morning, but I am as groggy as can be, so I felt like a puzzle would be a good choice for me.

On the first morning with Alar.my, my ringer went off promptly at 7:20 a.m. I picked up my phone to see a barrage of notifications lighting up my lock screen. The chaos forced me to sit up, focus, and complete a series of puzzles just to get it to stop. The puzzle involved memorizing yellow squares on a board and it was just enough to wake me up.

Instead of sitting bleary-eyed and fuzzy-headed in bed, the act of completing a game first thing really did get me up and going. While I didn’t use the snore tracker — I have an Evie ring that analyzes my sleep — I like that this app tries to help you get better sleep in a multitude of ways, on top of ensuring you don’t oversleep.

I also appreciate that Alar.my provides you with a slew of stats. I’m particularly proud of the fact that it typically takes me zero minutes to wake up, which means I pop up and complete my puzzles immediately. I imagine heavier sleepers will need a few more tries, but I’m sure Alar.my won’t let you slack off.

As a bonus, I’ve also been using Alar.my to wake me up from naps, which are a little tougher for me to stir from. I’ve also set the alarm as a way to rouse out of a bed rot day. I’ll give myself an hour or two to truly become one with my bed, then I’ll get up, complete a mission, and take that as a sign that I need to move on with my life.

The Takeaway

This app is such a good choice for heavy sleepers who snooze through multiple alarms and people like me who tend to wake up but feel groggy and confused and need an extra push to get out of bed. I can’t say that the app stopped my sleep inertia — I still needed coffee to get going — but I haven’t hit snooze since I downloaded the app.

My thought? The alarm works by inducing the slightest dose of panic as it forces you to complete missions, and I figure that’s what gets heavy sleepers up and at ‘em. While I don’t think I need to use it every single morning, I’ll definitely be setting it on my sleepless nights to ensure I get up and going right on time.