Wake up to Your Favorite Podcast With “Next Up”
iOS: If you listen to podcasts in the morning, you might want to jump to one of them as soon as you wake up. Next Up syncs with the Apple Podcasts app to turn your favorite podcast into an alarm clock.
I am against using your favorite music as an alarm clock , because you associate the song with stress. But unlike music, you usually only listen to a podcast once. And when the show of your choice grabs your attention, you can exit the “ugh what is consciousness” mode and start absorbing information (if Comedy Bang! Bang! Is considered “information”).
Next Up is sleek and well executed. It has several options for setting the alarm, repeating it on certain days, linking the alarm volume to the phone volume and choosing the playback order.
If your podcast doesn’t load or doesn’t have a new episode, the app has fallback sounds sorted by “calm”, “harsh” and “eclectic”. The app also includes a simple white noise player and a selection of recommended wake-up podcasts.
There is one big limitation: the app does not integrate with third party podcast apps and does not allow you to subscribe to podcasts directly. It only uses podcasts you subscribe to in the Apple Podcasts app.
If you usually get your podcasts through another app, the setup will be a little awkward. It’s best if you stick with a couple of specific podcasts to always be your morning alarm, rather than jumping between tons of shows.
Other than that, that’s all I would love to see from a podcast alarm clock. But I’m sure you creative people will think about a feature worth adding.
Update: 12/29/2019 3:30 pm: The developer has fixed a small issue in the app that prevented alarms from automatically activating every day. I removed the line to fix this problem. If you’ve downloaded the app before today, make sure iOS has updated it to the latest version.