Seeking Android alarm clock app with a specific feature
August 13, 2023 10:50 AM Subscribe
I am looking for an Android alarm clock app that displays each day of the week, and allows setting an alarm for each day, rather than the other way around. As you can see from the middle screenshot in this image, most alarm apps sort the alarms by time, and allow repeating on various days of the week. I want the opposite, where each day of the week is displayed along with a time that the alarm is set for that day.
Due to work obligations, I have to get up at a different time each day of the week. Yes, I know this is not recommended for sleep hygiene, but trust me that this works for me. It's also not infrequent that I have to get up earlier than usual on a particular day, due to an early meeting or needing to take a flight. The Time -> Day of Week organization makes it difficult to find what alarm is set for tomorrow morning. I have to look through all of the set alarms and see which one is set for Monday. It also makes it more cumbersome to change just tomorrow's alarm. For example, if I have an alarm set for 8 AM Monday, Thursday, and I need to wake up early on Monday, I need to go to the 8 AM alarm, deslect Monday, create a new alarm, and set it for Monday. When I want to change back, I have to do the reverse. If the alarms were organized by day, I could just change Monday's alarm time, and then change it back when I'm done.
It does look like the stock Android alarm app does allow setting multiple alarms for the same time on different days, which helps with one part of the problem, but that doesn't make it easier to figure out what alarm is set for a particular day, since the alarms are still sorted by time.
Due to work obligations, I have to get up at a different time each day of the week. Yes, I know this is not recommended for sleep hygiene, but trust me that this works for me. It's also not infrequent that I have to get up earlier than usual on a particular day, due to an early meeting or needing to take a flight. The Time -> Day of Week organization makes it difficult to find what alarm is set for tomorrow morning. I have to look through all of the set alarms and see which one is set for Monday. It also makes it more cumbersome to change just tomorrow's alarm. For example, if I have an alarm set for 8 AM Monday, Thursday, and I need to wake up early on Monday, I need to go to the 8 AM alarm, deslect Monday, create a new alarm, and set it for Monday. When I want to change back, I have to do the reverse. If the alarms were organized by day, I could just change Monday's alarm time, and then change it back when I'm done.
It does look like the stock Android alarm app does allow setting multiple alarms for the same time on different days, which helps with one part of the problem, but that doesn't make it easier to figure out what alarm is set for a particular day, since the alarms are still sorted by time.
Response by poster: If I have alarms like: Monday: 9, Tuesday 8, Wednesday 10, Thursday 6, Friday 7, then these are listed in the order 6 (Thursday), 7 (Friday), 8 (Tuesday) 9 (Monday), 10 (Wednesday). Then to change Wednesday, I have to look through all the alarms, figure out which one is set for Wednesday, and change the time, which changes the sorting order. Being organized by day of week instead of time is more useful for me.
posted by cruelfood at 12:10 PM on August 13, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by cruelfood at 12:10 PM on August 13, 2023 [2 favorites]
Could you put an item in your calendar and then set an alert?
posted by dbmcd at 12:12 PM on August 13, 2023
posted by dbmcd at 12:12 PM on August 13, 2023
I think Alarmy with the correct to name alarms and configure them might be what works for you.
posted by canine epigram at 1:53 PM on August 13, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by canine epigram at 1:53 PM on August 13, 2023 [1 favorite]
You can give each alarm a title. Why not just keep 5 alarms, one for each day of the week, and change as necessary?
posted by mannequito at 2:11 PM on August 13, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by mannequito at 2:11 PM on August 13, 2023 [1 favorite]
Best answer: I had pretty much the same use case, and found "Better Alarm" by smart software. They describe it as a "calendar-style alarm app". It lets me have simple recurring alarms for my regular wake-up time, but then set different alarms on specific dates if I have early appointments. The second screenshot on the Play store listing I linked illustrates what I'm describing.
There are a couple of little things about that annoy me, but nothing that's stopped me from using it for at least two years now.
posted by kxr at 3:58 PM on August 13, 2023 [1 favorite]
There are a couple of little things about that annoy me, but nothing that's stopped me from using it for at least two years now.
posted by kxr at 3:58 PM on August 13, 2023 [1 favorite]
Best answer: AMdroid has the power to schedule this and has fairly powerful sort of upcoming alarms including on a custom field that you can type whatever you want.
posted by Mitheral at 4:44 PM on August 13, 2023
posted by Mitheral at 4:44 PM on August 13, 2023
I use Alarmy for the same situation with labels. Bonus it is hands down the best and most vicious alarm app I have ever used.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 5:41 PM on August 13, 2023
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 5:41 PM on August 13, 2023
I don't want you to waste your time if it's much - especially since your original question is for a replacement app not a Fix-It...
But ... because I'm a curious monkey... What happens if you hit the 3 dot menu on the bottom right of the middle screen? Does it have a sorting option available? Wondering if this is just a temp setting.
(Interesting to think of the design decisions in these apps).
posted by symbioid at 5:51 PM on August 13, 2023
But ... because I'm a curious monkey... What happens if you hit the 3 dot menu on the bottom right of the middle screen? Does it have a sorting option available? Wondering if this is just a temp setting.
(Interesting to think of the design decisions in these apps).
posted by symbioid at 5:51 PM on August 13, 2023
Response by poster: Thanks everyone for the help and suggestions!
Both Better Alarm and AMdroid look like they will do what I want. By default, they both sort by the order the alarms will go off, from now. That's basically fine for my purposes, since my most common use case is I want to check tomorrow morning's alarm and make sure it's set for an appropriate time. AMroid also supports sorting by label, which I can use to sort the alarms by day, with approrpiately chosen labels.
In Alarmy, I could apply labels to alarms, but I didn't see an option to sort by label or by upcoming alarms. Maybe it's in there and I couldn't find it?
symbioid, the standard Google alarm app does have settings, but I can't find any option to sort by label or otherwise change the sorting. The app seems to want to always sort by time of day.
dbmcd, calendar events are not a good use case for this, as I would still like to have the ability to snooze my alarm, and I don't think there's a way to do that with calendar events.
posted by cruelfood at 6:56 PM on August 13, 2023 [1 favorite]
Both Better Alarm and AMdroid look like they will do what I want. By default, they both sort by the order the alarms will go off, from now. That's basically fine for my purposes, since my most common use case is I want to check tomorrow morning's alarm and make sure it's set for an appropriate time. AMroid also supports sorting by label, which I can use to sort the alarms by day, with approrpiately chosen labels.
In Alarmy, I could apply labels to alarms, but I didn't see an option to sort by label or by upcoming alarms. Maybe it's in there and I couldn't find it?
symbioid, the standard Google alarm app does have settings, but I can't find any option to sort by label or otherwise change the sorting. The app seems to want to always sort by time of day.
dbmcd, calendar events are not a good use case for this, as I would still like to have the ability to snooze my alarm, and I don't think there's a way to do that with calendar events.
posted by cruelfood at 6:56 PM on August 13, 2023 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: In the unlikely event that someone reads this question later, I also figured out that Better Alarm supports overriding an alarm for the next occurrence, without changing when the alarm is usually scheduled for. So that's perfect for when I have to wake up early on specific days.
posted by cruelfood at 2:29 PM on August 24, 2023
posted by cruelfood at 2:29 PM on August 24, 2023
I'll note AMDroid also will allow skips without effecting the next operation. It also allows one time changes to the time. Effectively a pre planned snooze.
posted by Mitheral at 3:55 PM on August 24, 2023
posted by Mitheral at 3:55 PM on August 24, 2023
You are not logged in, either login or create an account to post comments
posted by dobbs at 10:54 AM on August 13, 2023 [1 favorite]