There are many different ways to wake up in the morning, and tons of those options are available on the iPhone. So to stand out in a field full of iPhone alarm clocks, a company has to do something different than the rest. One contender in this field is Alarmed, and it stands out by doing more than just waking you up.
Alarmed isn’t just an alarm clock. It’s also a to-do list, reminder, calendar and more, and that’s just to get started. Find out what else after the jump.
The Core
At its heart, Alarmed is, well, an alarm clock. Although you could just use the built-in Clock feature on iOS to do the same thing, Alarmed takes a slightly different path. With the Clock app, you have to touch the screen a few different times to select multiple days, while with Alarmed, you just check off the appropriate days on the bottom of the screen, then go from there.
Setting up alarms takes just a few seconds.
Because Alarmed isn’t a root app, it won’t sound off if the ringer is turned off, but that’s really the only drawback. Otherwise, you can also adjust the length of your sleep timers, which comes in really handy if you’re the type of person who likes to get an extra 7 minutes exactly.
Alarmed also includes add-on packs.
Timers
While the Clock app has a timer function, Alarmed goes yet another step further. The dial at the bottom of the screen counts off from hours, minutes and seconds, making it easy to fine tune your alarm. There are also quick setting buttons at the top of the dial, so you can set a 5, 15 or 30 minute timer right off the bat with a few quick taps. Or, you can also set the timer to count up if you need to, something I haven’t gotten the Clock app to do at all.
Reminders are easy to input.
The nice bonus for this one though is the “Nag Me” switch. If you’re like me, maybe a timer goes off and you can’t attend to it right away, but you don’t want to let it go either. The Nag Me feature keeps on bugging you until you turn off the timer completely, that way you don’t forget what you have to do. It comes in handy more than you’d expect.
Reminders
We’ve all got our own to-do systems, and Alarmed throws itself into the mix as well. Now you could just go out and set yourself a quick reminder, which requires you entering a title and time, then going on your way. But the other option is to set a Super Reminder, which ramps things up to 11.
Alarm clocks are nice and quick to set.
The Super Reminder gives you multiple options for each alert, to the point where it gets pretty detailed. You first set the time and message like any other note, but then you can have the reminder repeat if necessary, or just repeat until a set date. Then you can adjust how the alarm sounds and turns off, then there’s even a pre-alarm setting, where you can warn yourself before the actual reminder goes off. It’s a bit overkill at times, but sometimes it’s better to have the options than not to.
Verdict
Is Alarmed worth the money? When I used it, I found that the reminder system didn’t really work into my system, but I kind of expected that since I’ve been stuck on OmniFocus for a while now. But only recently did I start using my iPhone for my regular alarm clock, so I decided that trying out Alarmed instead of Clock would work well.
It did work, although the initial settings caused me to shoot out of bed like a shot because it was just too loud and sudden. Once I tweaked around with it a bit though, I started using it all the time, and now I use it daily.
At the end of the day, this app does beat Clock by a pretty wide margin in a few different fields. But for me, I wondered why I needed all of these options when Clock does work and work pretty well at that. Do I really need to count down a timer backwards? Do I need any of the functions of the Super Reminder? Ultimately, I don’t. So for me, Alarmed has become my new alarm clock, but that’s it. None of the other features really do anything for me, so they just sit there unused.
That said, even though I have no use for the reminders, they are well done and I can totally see someone loving the features. Between the reminders and the alarm settings, you’ve got a pretty versatile app, and it is free.
So will it be a wasted app on your iPhone? Not at all. In fact, it may be one of your most used. Just make sure you have a place for it in your life and you’ll be good to go.