Smart Alarm

Wake up Smarter!

The AutoSleep 6.4 Apple Watch app now has a built in Smart Alarm. It requires WatchOS 6 or higher. 

You can now set an alarm directly in the Watch app and it even works in flight mode! No iPhone connection required. 


What's a Smart Alarm?

A smart alarm helps you wake up in lighter sleep. If you are woken in deep sleep you can often feel groggy for the whole day!

AutoSleep Smart Alarm


How does it work?

There are two options here, and you can even combine them.

Smart modes

Time Window
Firstly, you set a time window in which you would like to be woken. The default is within 15 minutes of your set alarm time. You can change to anything from 1 minute to 28 minutes prior to your final alarm. 

Once that's in place you can choose your options. 

Arousal
One strategy is to have your Apple Watch "tickle" or "nudge" your wrist every minute during your time window. Tickle is light, Nudge is a bit more intense. What this will do is take you out of deeper sleep. You may not even feel it at the time. Or just think "what was that?" and then go back to sleep. This however, will take you out of that deep sleep phase. 

We find arousal to be the best option. A 10 minute window with tickle is a terrific way to wake up. It's like having snooze but without the negatives of snooze. It makes early wake much less appealing, but if you really want this feature, then we've included that too. 

Early Wake
The other strategy is to let AutoSleep examine how deep your last 5 minutes of sleep was at 1 minute intervals. There are two options here:

Light Sleep
If you enable this option, if AutoSleep detects you are in a lighter sleep phase according to your AutoSleep calibration settings, then it will wake you up early. 

Medium Sleep 
If you enable this option, if AutoSleep detects you are not in a deep sleep phase then it will wake you up early, 


Lights Off Mode

Lights off is a feature in AutoSleep where you tell the Watch app that you now intend to go to sleep. You can learn more here

You can optionally combine lights off and setting your alarm in one step. If you do this, AutoSleep will set your smart alarm, start tracking your sleep and switch to the live sleep tracking display. In smart alarm mode it will show the time until your alarm sounds instead of the time in bed display. Pressing Done on the live sleep tracking display will turn off your smart alarm should you wake up early by your own means. 

Lights out mode


Alarm Mode

If you don't want to use Lights Off, you can just enable the smart alarm at any time during the day and it will sound according to your settings. 

Important Note: You must enable the alarm each day at some time on your Watch as this is a requirement of the native Smart Alarm functionality on Apple Watch. We recommend the large modular complication on your sleeping Watch face as this makes it very clear whether the alarm is enabled or not. If you are using two Apple Watches, you need to enable it on the Watch you are wearing to bed.

Standard Mode

You then turn the alarm on or off as desired. 

Turn alarm off



Waking up Silently with Haptics

Haptics are the silent taps that the Watch gives to notify you of something without annoying everyone in your vicinity. 

However, a small number of people still have those annoying sounds on the Watch. Argh. 

You can turn them off by swiping up on any clock face. This displays the Watch control centre. You then touch the button with a bell on it so it looks like this. Your friends will love you for it. 

Turn off the sounds and increase your popularity.




What's the difference between this and AutoWake?

AutoWake has more advanced options including wake up after x hours, wake up after x quality sleep, HomeKit support and it works on older versions of WatchOS. In order to do this is requires a connection to your iPhone throughout the night. The native Watch smart alarm API does not allow these features.



Flow Chart

Here's a chart that covers all the options. 
Click on it to expand. 
Smart Alarm Chart





We hope you enjoy waking up smart!