Awake Alarm Clock App: Beautiful, Brutal Wake-Ups
Awake alarm clock app gets the big idea right: waking up should be harder to ignore if you are the kind of person who keeps snoozing. It is a free and open-source alarm clock application with a super modern look, a simple setup, and dismissal challenges that can get genuinely intense. I really like the concept, but the polish is not all the way there yet.
Awake makes dismissing alarms harder on purpose
The main reason Awake caught my attention is that it is not just another basic alarm app with a prettier skin. Yes, it can show a standard full-screen ringing interface, but the more interesting part is how it lets you make the process of dismissing an alarm more complex.
If you struggle to wake up because you keep snoozing your alarm, this might just be the app for you. Awake includes challenges that force you to do something before the alarm stops, which is exactly the kind of friction some people need in the morning.
The alarm challenges are the best part of Awake
Awake gives you a few different ways to stop an alarm. The default ringing screen is just a standard full-screen alarm interface, so there is nothing special there. The fun starts when you switch to one of the challenge-based dismissal screens.
- Math challenge makes you solve a maths equation.
- Shake to stop makes you shake your phone 10 times.
- Tap challenge makes you tap the screen 50 times.
- Scan QR code makes you scan a saved or printed QR code.
The QR code option is the toughest of the lot in my opinion. You download a QR code, save it somewhere else, put it on another phone, keep it on your computer, or even print it out, and then you have to scan it to dismiss the alarm. That is a really cool concept for an alarm clock application because it can physically force you out of bed.
The setup is basically instant
The basic setup process is extremely quick. After opening Awake, I tapped allow notifications, and that was it. From there, adding an alarm is just a matter of tapping the red plus button, choosing a time, giving the alarm a title, and tapping add.
There are also a few simple settings available from the cog icon. Awake lets you switch to a 24-hour format, enable or disable vibrations, and turn on a gradual fade in. Those are the practical controls I want in an alarm app without making the whole thing feel crowded.
Awake looks sleek, but some UI details need work
Even with an empty alarm list, Awake looks pretty dang sleek. I am a big fan of the new Morphism design language here, and the app immediately feels more modern than a lot of alarm clock apps.
That said, a few parts of the interface do not quite match the rest of the design. The title element and the clock element could do with some freshening up, and the area behind the navigation bar should be transparent. These are small things, but they make the app feel less consistent than it could.
The animations are where I think Awake could improve the most. Right now they are all pretty basic, and that makes the app feel just a little less polished. I would love to see things like swiping the clock element down to view a larger preview, or pages expanding to and from their respective buttons instead of just popping in out of nowhere.
That would take this art from being what is currently probably a seven out of 10 to closer to either a nine or even 10 out of 10.
— Sam BeckmanMy verdict on Awake
Awake is already a genuinely cool alarm clock app because the core idea is strong: make waking up harder to dismiss when your half-asleep brain wants to snooze. The modern design gives it a great foundation, and the challenge options make it more useful than a simple alarm replacement.
The only thing holding Awake back is polish. Some interface elements do not fully match the modern design, and the animations need refinement. If the developer tightens those pieces up, this could move from a solid app into something much closer to excellent.
From Sam Beckman
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