Notes on waking up
AlarmKit reliability, Relentless backup defense, wake-up missions, and honest comparisons.
The QR code alarm: why scanning a barcode gets you out of bed
Any barcode is the off button. Why physical distance beats willpower, and how Scan to Silence works.
The alarm that makes you do jumping jacks (and counts them)
The camera counts your reps — entirely on-device — before the alarm goes quiet. There's no doing this in your sleep.
AlarmPop vs Awake: two mission alarms, two different bets
Missions, reliability, privacy, and philosophy — an honest head-to-head, including what Awake does well.
PhilosophyThe most annoying alarm app on iPhone (it's annoying on purpose)
Why annoying beats loud: habituation, the science of un-ignorable sound, and the alarm built around it.
The heavy sleeper's wake-up kit: 7 things that actually work
Apps, hardware, and habits that make waking up mandatory instead of optional — in the order we'd buy them.
7 alarms you physically can't sleep through, ranked
Ranked by one metric: how hard is it to defeat half-asleep? Snoozing counts as defeat.
How to wake up when you've slept through everything
Louder isn't working. A 7-step system: friction, missions, vibration, light, and timing.
What is AlarmKit? iOS 26's alarm framework, explained
The first time Apple ever opened the real alarm pipeline to developers — what changed, and which apps use it.
Your alarm app has been lying to you (and it wasn't its fault)
Until iOS 26, iPhone treated third-party alarms as notifications — mutable, suppressible, killable. AlarmKit changed everything.
AlarmPop vs Alarmy: which alarm app actually gets you out of bed?
Missions, reliability, privacy, and price — an honest head-to-head, including what Alarmy does better.