This Alarm Clock App Will Make You Take a (Nice) Picture to Turn It Off
iOS, Android: I’m pretty sure Alarmy is evil, but it’s perfect because a good alarm clock should have two annoying parts and one useful part. You don’t want to hate your alarm clock whenever it wakes you up every morning, but a great alarm clock app should be tricky to turn off (tempting you to go back to bed).
Instead of simply publishing an annoying tone or song, Alarmy (for iOS and Android) borrows a page from any other fun applications, alarms, and allows you to configure call-up to prove that you get out of bed. And while any app can ask you to solve a math problem, shake your phone, or solve a graphics puzzle – all Alarmy variants are also – the app takes the Morning Challenge concept one step further.
When you set an alarm, you are asked to indicate the time, sound and vibration, whether you want to snooze it or not, and … the task. Use a song from a Tom Cruise movie.
Of the six missions you can choose from, two are particularly tricky. The first one, “Barcode / QR Code”, allows you to scan any barcode of any product (eg book, your shampoo, etc.) or any QR code that you have nearby or that you have recently printed out.
Scan any code to register with Alarmy. Then, once your alarm starts to go off, it will work until you use your device’s camera to scan the barcode / QR code. Depending on how far away you’ve placed the specified item in your home or apartment, it can be a great restraining factor for sleep.
If you don’t want to fiddle with your scanned items, Alarmy also offers an easier “Take Snapshot” mode. Just take a picture of something in your home as it will be when you usually wake up at any time of the day – for example, in your closet.
As before, your alarm will ring and will not go off until you take a similar photo of the item. Depending on your photography skills and sleep memory, this can usually take you a little time in the morning, but Alarmy also provides you with a useful overlay of your registered image versus what you see on the screen, so even your tired self can do the perfect shot.
While the Alarmy features are completely free to use, the app has a small ad under your alarm list, unless you pay $ 1 for the full app. When I used the app, the ads didn’t bother me at all, and I doubt that they would catch me at dawn.