Wakening - Gradual Alarm

About Wakening - Gradual Alarm

Wakening is an alarm clock app that uses the gradually increasing sounds and light (from the phone screen) to gently ease you out of sleep. Being shocked awake by a loud alarm clock while in deep sleep is always unpleasant. But if you are exposed to light and pleasant sounds some period of time before you need to get up (such as 20 to 30 minutes), you will likely be pulled out of sleep at a lighter phase of the sleep cycle, leading to a more pleasant morning.

Wakening is not the first alarm clock app to offer this functionality, but it is attractive, intuitive and simple to use. It has high-quality sound samples so you can wake up to ocean waves, rain drops or whatever sound files you want to choose. It is completely free with no ads. It follows Android Material interface design philosophy, and uses a dark theme (or automatically selects based on your theme setting on Android versions Q and later) while setting your alarms, since you don't want to be staring at a bright screen before bed.

Why you might like Wakening:
- Free
- Ad-free
- No permissions requested
- Simple, intuitive and easy-to-use
- Dark theme

Features:
- Create multiple alarms that recur on specified days each week
- Choose the transition time for sound and light to increase
- Choose the color of the screen to wake up to
- Wake up to the pleasant sounds of ocean waves crashing over the shore at the Bay of Fundy, or a tea kettle boiling, rain falling, or your choice of any sound file
- If you are still not awake when the sound is at full volume and the light is at full brightness, the sound will become more immediate and hard to sleep through
- Test your defined alarms to see what it will look and sound like when you wake up
- Offset or skip the next alarm if you know you don't need to wake up the next day, and the normal schedule will resume afterwards
- Snooze the alarm if you want to sleep a bit later

However, Wakening can not be everything for everyone, and it might not be for you if:
- you are a deep sleeper and need really disturbing noises to wake up and stay up. Wakening uses soft, pleasant sounds that might be enough to wake everyone. While you can choose your own sounds that can be louder, the gradual wake up is what makes Wakening special.
- you sleep in a bright, noisy environment. The app depends on the phone screen and speakers to wake you, and they can only do so much.