Awake’s new app requires heavy sleepers to finish duties with a purpose to flip off the alarm | TechCrunch

A brand new iOS app known as Awake, designed particularly for heavy sleepers who should full missions to show off their alarms, launched Monday. The app is just accessible to customers with the iOS 26 replace, which additionally got here out on Monday. 

Not like conventional alarm clocks that may be silenced with a easy faucet, Awake is meant to actively interact customers’ brains to make sure they totally get up. As soon as the alarm sounds, customers should full a collection of interactive missions to show it off. 

These duties embody a wide range of challenges, resembling rotating the iPhone, finishing a set of push-ups, or tackling math issues, puzzles, and even language classes. By incorporating bodily and psychological actions, Awake goals to assist break the cycle of hitting snooze and encourage a extra energetic begin to the day.

Whereas different comparable apps exist, resembling Alarmy, Challenges, and Mathe Alarm, amongst others, Awake units itself aside by providing extra options. Certainly one of these is a “Morning Briefing,” which presents a custom-made abstract of data the person chooses the evening earlier than, together with the climate forecast and occasions from a calendar.

There’s additionally a Block integration, which prevents customers from accessing social media instantly upon waking. A future function will permit folks to hearken to new podcast episodes as quickly as they open their eyes.

Moreover, Awake features a sleep planning operate that helps enhance sleep high quality by permitting customers to enter the specified quantity of sleep and most popular wake-up time. It then calculates the perfect time to go to mattress.

Leo Mehlig, the indie developer behind the favored day by day planner app Structured, says he developed Awake in response to excessive demand from Structured customers. Mehlig jumped on the concept after Apple introduced iOS 26, which offered builders with entry to a brand new Alarm Equipment framework to create alarm and timer apps with options like full-screen alerts.

“I just felt like there had to be something better than a standard alarm clock for people who struggle to get up in the morning,” he informed TechCrunch. “So we always had [planned for it], but we basically sidelined it. And then when I saw the [Apple] keynote, I saw the Alarm Kit, I was like, ‘OK, now we need to build this.’”

Awake is offered without spending a dime, with a premium subscription choice for $1.75 monthly or $19.99 per 12 months, which unlocks extra missions resembling getting as much as activate a light-weight, scanning a QR code, and strolling a sure variety of steps. One mission even requires customers to recite a mantra.

Trying forward, Mehlig envisions incorporating a function known as “Wake Up Check,” which can double-check if individuals are really awake after finishing a mission. Through the use of the step counter, the app will monitor customers’ motion after the mission; if no motion is detected, it can ship a notification. If the person doesn’t reply inside a couple of minutes, the app will set off one other alarm to make sure they don’t fall again asleep.