For people who can sleep through three alarms and a sunrise lamp, a new iOS app called Awake employs s tougher tactic: It won’t stop until you have completed a mission.
Designed for heavy sleepers, the app transforms mornings into a series of mini-challenges — physical, mental and behavioral — that fight morning sleep inertia to break the cycle of snooze.
A brain-first alarm for heavy sleepers
The idea of Awake is to force engagement the second an alarm goes off. Rather than a single swipe to silence, the app summons full-screen alerts and forces you to solve problems that demand actual work: Rotate your iPhone along a certain sequence of directions, grind through rapid math problems, complete a puzzle, bang out some push-ups or belt off a short language prompt. The idea is to quickly engage your brain and body, which are groggiest within minutes of waking.
Under the gimmick lies a valuable insight. That cognitive fog after waking — sleep inertia — can last 15 to 60 minutes, said the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. Activation exercises, light exposure and mild physical movement have all been found in research published in Sleep and the Journal of Sleep Research to help snap you out of that post-wakeup grogginess faster. Awake bakes these countermeasures into the alarm.
How the missions work
At the free level, users can choose from core missions and stack them to add complexity. The premium version adds higher-friction scenarios: get to your feet and turn on a smart light, scan one of those QR codes you’ve posted just outside the bedroom door, take a certain number of paces as measured by the motion sensors or say out loud your intent in brief catechism form for voice confirmation. The type also helps — do a physical task and a cognitive one, and you’re less likely to perform the actions unconsciously on autopilot mode, so to speak, and doze off.
Awake also has a “Morning Briefing,” which is a customizable view tailored to essentials like weather, calendar events and reminders. That may dampen the impulse to turn first to social apps in morning, a habit associated with lower moods and productivity. Drive that point home, and the app pairs with Block to limit access to social media immediately upon waking — a behavior guardrail at a time when willpower is weakest.
Based on Apple’s new alarm framework
Awake uses the brand-new AlarmKit framework in iOS 26 to allow third-party apps access to a reliable and time-critical source of alarms, with full screen alerts and better system permissions. Completely in the past, on iOS, restrictions with respect to background functionality made authentic alarm replacements difficult. AlarmKit takes those capabilities and make them official, providing developers with better hooks for alarms and timers while also subjection those processes to stronger power-saving measures.
The app is a product of Leo Mehlig, the indie developer responsible for day planner Structured (which I love). Interest from productivity-focused users — and the aforementioned system APIs — made a mission-driven alarm the obvious next step, says Mehlig. It’s a perfect pairing: Structured rules the day; Awake is designed to get you into the mood for it.
Why a task can break the snooze loop
Plenty of people snooze. A study by the University of Notre Dame in the Journal of Sleep Research found that napping is widespread and, in appropriate doses, not necessarily harmful. The problem comes when snoozing lasts so long that sleep becomes disrupted and inertia dragged out. By front-loading light movement, problem solving and environmental cues (such as turning on a light), apps like Awake can narrow the window to full alertness.
There is also the simple math of designing habit. And friction does make people behave; by making it harder for someone to silence an alarm, you raise the cost of staying in bed. Behavioral scientists have demonstrated that even small measures — walking to scan a code, for instance — make a significant difference in outcomes. Awake’s optional mantra mission incorporates a verbal component, accessing implementation intentions ( “I’m up and starting my day”), which can also help to strengthen follow-through.
Features beyond the alarm
Awake has a sleep planning tool that reverse-calculates bedtime from target wake-up, a simple but effective nudge — and one backed by advice from groups such as the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and the CDC, which says one in three U.S. adults consistently get less than the recommended seven hours of sleep.
And yes, a “Wake Up Check” feature is coming down the pipeline. Once you’ve completed the mission, the app can track brief movement through a pedometer. If it senses you haven’t moved, presumably back to bed, it pings once more and if there’s no response, resets the alarm. It’s a smart hedge against the old “mission accomplished, back under the covers” relapse.
Pricing, availability, and competitors
Awake is free to download, with a premium option that costs $1.75 per month or $19.99 for the year to unlock advanced missions and more customization.
It fills a (small) niche crammed with apps like Alarmy, Challenges and math-centered alarms, but one that leans heavier into system-level integration, more mission variety, and post-wwake behavioral helping.
Privacy wise, the app wants your permission for motion activity, to use the camera for QR scans, voice privacy tasks and notifications.
Missions are local-by-design; there’s no reason why sensitive content should go out of the device, but as always, be sure to double-check what permissions you’re granting and use the built-in access settings if needed.
The bottom line, for those who are chronic oversleepers: alarms that just get louder aren’t going to alter the outcome. Awake resets the issue as a brief purposeful routine of doing something to create s state change. By leveraging new iOS alarm features and behavioral design, it offers a better way for heavy sleepers to actually rise on their first attempt.
