Android smartphones and tablets have long become the perfect substitute not only for alarm clocks, but for notebooks, planners, players, TVs, books and toys, so no wonder why I cannot remember when was the last time I used an analog clock to set the morning alarm, or watch to tell the time. Without much ado, let us take a close look at some of the great free alarm clock apps on Google Play.
One more thing, though. Some people need a glass of ice-cold water in their face to really wake up and get going immediately, while others like to wake up to the calm and soothing sounds of ocean waves, slowly regaining their focus, which is why they schedule an alarm to start some 30 minutes before they actually need to get up. Whichever is your preferred method of waking up, we have you covered, so read on.
AlarmDroid
by Fabian Lueghausen
If you like to wake up to the sounds of your favorite radio station, AlarmDroid is your app. Available in many languages, this feature-packed alarm clock can tap both into your music playlist and your favorite radio streaming, provided you have stable Internet connection.
The nifty flip’n’snooze feature sends the alarm to snooze mode by simply turning the phone over. Moreover, the cool speaking clock feature starts your morning by announcing the time and current weather conditions. I wouldn’t be surprised developers found their ideas somewhere in the Fifth Element movie.
AlarmDroid does not read the existing alarms you might already have in your Android device, so the first thing you need to do is create your custom alarms by tapping on the plus button. The UI is straightforward and modern, and you get straight to configuration panel where you can set the recurrence of your alarms and their time, as well as the sound and snooze settings.
If you tap on the default alarm tone you will open a menu displaying the available sound sources the app can tap into for the alarm ringer: ringtone, playlist, local music file and Internet streaming channel. Depending on which you select, you will then see either a prompt or a file browser.
Another great feature here is you can test the alarm to see whether the settings have come into effect, especially if you select the Internet radio streaming. Whenever the app cannot connect to the stream, or a music file or playlist have been deleted, it will play a substitute tone.
You can also adjust the tone volume and toggle on or off the vibrate feature, or enable the speaking clock, but that’s not all yet. AlarmDroid can throw different obstacles at you before you can finally hit that snooze button, so if you need an extra challenge to wake up, turn that on.
Pros
- Great functionality that beats the competition
- Perfect for a morning doze of radio streaming
Cons
- Not an overly pretty design
DashClock Widget
By Roman Nurik
DashClock is a lock screen widget with a handful of powerful extensions that cover RSS readers, text message and email notifications, current weather conditions and news feeds. It’s great as a lock screen widget with a highly expandable nature, which makes it a perfect choice not only for an alarm clock, but also a go-to notification center – highly customizable, flexible, handy.
The app comes bundled with a number of most popular extensions, such as weather, missed calls, unread sms, pending Calendar appointments, unread emails, the next scheduled alarm. You will most likely need to enable widgets in your security settings under the settings menu, and then you can start customizing the widget to your liking. You can set the widget as your primary lock screen, but beware – this nifty thing does not work with password or secure pattern enabled. So, if secure access is an issue with you, DashClock most likely will not match your requirements.
Pros
- Great expandable lock screen widget that not only gives you access to your alarm clock, but also to a bunch of useful information
Cons
- Doesn’t work with secure pattern or password lock screen enabled
Timely Alarm Clock
By Bitspin
Timely is one of the most aesthetically appealing and feature-rich alarm clocks on the list featuring three panels of settings you can toy with when setting alarms, a timer mode, a main clock screen and a stopwatch.
The alarm functionality supports setting several alarms simultaneously, and customize each with different ringtones and labels, as well as add math challenges or a match mini-game for those who need an extra challenge to wake up.
Timely also boasts of a handy synchronization feature, so you can upload your settings to the cloud, and sync all your Android devices’ alarms.
Another virtue of Timely is its original sounds and a unique Smart Rise feature that makes waking up a pleasant experience – users can choose from a variety of color schemes and hand-crafted designer clocks when creating their alarms. Moreover, you can create your own look using a built-in design tool.
Besides math challenges, you can set Timely to go to snooze mode by turning the phone over, or reduce the alarm volume when you lift the phone.
Cloud integration allows you to control alarms on all your synchronized devices – create, dismiss and snooze alarms on all of your devices from one UI.
The app has a widget and a DashClock extension, so you can use both; it also supports recurring alarms, and sports awesome animations.
Pros
- Beautiful and highly customizable alarms, unique sounds, advanced functionality, compatibility with DashClock widget, math challenges
Cons
- Not a con per se, but the app requires Android 4.0.3 and up, so devices running older OS versions are left behind.
Morning Routine Free
By Agens AS
This one is for those who need some sort of a shocker alarm to wake up. Morning Routine is not satisfied with a tap on the snooze button to shut up. Instead, this highly configurable alarm will make you scan bar codes and images to stop ringing. For example, you can configure the app to snooze when you scan a toothpaste bar code, or launch a certain app. Basically, you can program the app to recognize a complex set of your actions to snooze the alarm. Hence, you can do a whole morning routine to turn the alarm off (like scanning milk or coffee can’s bar code, which effectively requires you get out of bed and head over to the kitchen).
The app is flexible and combines alarm clock with your morning to-do list. You can have it play your favorite radio station or launch a web browser with a specific webpage once you wake up, but one of the greatest features for power users is the support for Tasker tasks.
The developers took the time to explain why the app needs each and every permission, so I wouldn’t suspect any abuse here. Additionally, the app can be configured to recognize your home WiFi network, so that whenever you do not sleep at home, the app will run the morning routine, but will recognize any bar code you throw at it without requiring the specific pre-defined bar codes you registered, which is great for travelers.
Pros
- Great for power users, fun to use, versatile in customization, unique in wake up methods
- Responsive support
Cons
- May have an occasional bug since the app is in alpha-testing, although user reviews are great
SleepBot – Sleep Cycle Alarm
by SleepBot
Available for both Android and iOS devices, SleepBot is not only an alarm clock, but also sleep activity tracker designed to wake you up at the right time. How does it calculate the right time? Basically, the app uses your device’s accelerometer to track your night’s sleep, even recording sounds, if you choose so, and wakes you up during light sleep.
The alarm lets you customize the time range when you’d like to be woken up, while the app triggers the alarm based on your sleep cycles. In addition, it aggregates a database of your sleeping activity and produces some useful reports based on it, such as sleep debt log and smart habits that would normalize your sleep.
Besides alarms based on your sleep cycles, the app can track your movement and record sounds, as well as analyze your sleep activity to produce smart trend and sleep debt graphs. Also, it will export and sync your data to mysleepbot.com and create multiple alarms – all that functionality is wrapped in a beautiful and intuitive UI.
SleepBot is recognized by the U.S. National Institute of Health and the National Academy of Engineering for innovation in health industry. Users of Tasker will be glad to know SleepBot is compatible with its tasks, as well as with Gentle Alarm and Relax & Sleep.
SleepBot has some smart suggestions that will help you fall asleep faster, too.
Pros
- Quite a powerful app with a unique approach – tracking your sleep cycles, sounds and movements to analyze your sleep patterns and suggest good sleeping habits, as well as calculate your sleep debt. Honestly, it’s a surprise the app is free.
Cons
- Since the app has all that advanced functionality, it does require a whole lot of permissions, and while each permission is honestly justified and explained, it might be too much for the privacy paranoid. Suggestion to sync it with your Google+ account is where it lost me.
Walk Me Up! Alarm Clock
As the name suggests it, this app will make you get out of bed and walk so that you can make it stop ringing. It has some clever algorithms that allow it to recognize when you cheat and try to just shake the device instead of walking. If you don’t believe me, try it out. So, this is one of the best and simplest solutions for the true owls who find it a pain waking up early and tend to fall back to sleep after turning the alarm off. If that is your case, you might want to enable the Evil Mode, and hate it the next morning, but yet appreciate it does the job.
You can set the number of steps you will have to take before you can dismiss the alarm, as well as adjust the step counter sensitivity. You can apply labels to alarms and create multiple alarms quickly, as well as set custom alarm volume and ringtone.
It is free, but ad-supported.
The good part is walking may be less annoying than having to solve puzzles and riddles to some of you, especially when you have to stare at the bright display when your eyes are still in their night-vision mode. In this regard, Walk Me Up does the job of getting you out of bed.
The app does read your existing Android alarms with their settings, so you can use those or create new alarms, which is quite easy. The quick alarm feature lets you create a new alarm for 1 minute from now up to 6 hours in just two taps. Of course, you can set custom music and enable vibration, as well as create multiple scheduled and recurring alarms.
Voice Assistance feature will count the number of step out loud for you, if you choose to enable it. By the way, there is no limit to the number of steps you can set for the alarm to stop ringing, so think twice before you set.
Pros
- Does effectively get you out of bed
Cons
- Might not appeal to those who like to wake up gently
- ads
Lightning Bug – Sleep Clock
This one is actually a sleep clock, but it does have the alarm feature, and even though Lightning Bug allows you to create one alarm only, it does have a magic touch to the way it wakes you up. This is my personal favorite because it offers a large variety of sounds – from ocean waves to the sound of rain, cosmic ‘aums’ and meditation chants. For the lonely folks, it can play the sounds of household activity, like a dishwasher or a ceiling fan, white noise, city trains, down-tempo break beats, but the animal and musical instruments, like flutes, guitars and endless pad loops are just perfect for a soft and relaxed waking up.
Because this app is designed to help you fall asleep, it will enhance your sleep habits and the overall quality of your sleep, thus you will have less trouble waking up.
We reviewed the app, so check its features here. It is free and has plenty of sound packs for you to experiment, while you can also choose from a number of design themes for your alarm. I would say it is no inferior to Timely, with the only disadvantage of allowing to create no more than one alarm.
Pros
- Beautiful design and a rich plethora of sounds (over 200) with customizable volumes and duration
- Can display local weather
- Highly customizable scenes and sounds
- Perfect for a slow and relaxed waking up
- Customizable snooze button
- Offers a beautiful and customizable digital clock with alarm to replace your bedside clock
Cons
- The ability to set only one alarm
That’s it for today; hope you’ve found your app on this list. If you have more alarm clock apps suggestions for Android, let us know in the comments below, and stay tuned to PocketMeta for iOS alarm clock apps.
