Wakeify support

Wakeify works with Apple Music, Spotify and the built-in iOS alarm tones. Connect one service, both, or neither, because the tones need no account at all. Wakeify searches the full Apple Music and Spotify catalogues from inside the app, so a track does not have to be in your library.

Connect a service from the first-run setup, or later in Wakeify → Settings → Music Services.

No. A Spotify alarm works with a free Spotify account, and so does searching Spotify inside Wakeify. There is nothing to subscribe to. Only Full Song mode, which plays the complete track, needs a subscription, and that mode is offered on Apple Music.

So the only subscription that changes anything in Wakeify is an Apple Music one, and only for Full Song mode.

Add or edit an alarm in Wakeify and tap the Sound row. Switch between the Apple Music, Spotify and Tones tabs at the top, search, and tap the orange play button on any row to hear what the alarm will sound like before you choose it.

You can pick a song, an album, an artist or a playlist. For anything other than a single song, Wakeify picks one track from it, and saving the alarm again picks a different one, which is useful if you have started sleeping through a particular chorus.

Not at the moment. Wakeify alarm sounds come from the Apple Music catalogue, the Spotify catalogue, or the built-in iOS tones. Importing a local audio file is a reasonable request, so if you want it, say so by email and it goes on the list.

A normal Wakeify alarm plays a short excerpt of your track with a five-second fade-in, looping until you stop it. Full Song mode plays the entire Apple Music track instead, which needs a subscription, an internet connection, and Wakeify still running in the background.

A normal alarm works with your music app closed, with no internet connection, and with Wakeify itself force-quit.

Full Song mode is the better experience when it works, and it has real conditions attached:

• It needs an active Apple Music subscription.
• Wakeify and the Music app have to still be open in the background. Force-quit either one and the alarm falls back to the short excerpt.
• It needs an internet connection at wake-up time.
• There is no fade-in. A Full Song alarm starts at your ringer volume instead of rising from silence.
• Snooze still works, but on Wakeify's own screen rather than the usual alarm screen, and only if Snooze is switched on for that alarm.
• It does not appear on Apple Watch.

The toggle sits under the Sound row when you have chosen an Apple Music track, with the same warning printed beneath it. If you want an alarm you never have to think about, leave it off. If you want the whole song and you keep your apps open, turn it on.

Spotify alarms always play the short excerpt, because the Full Song toggle is only offered for Apple Music.

Because a normal Wakeify alarm plays a short excerpt of your track rather than the whole thing, looping with a smooth fade until you stop it. It keeps going for as long as you need it to, and it works with no internet connection at all.

That is the trade Wakeify makes: a shorter piece of the song in exchange for an alarm that always fires. In practice the loop sounds like the song continuing rather than stopping. Full Song mode plays the whole Apple Music track instead, with the conditions listed above.

No. A normal Wakeify alarm rings in airplane mode. You need a connection while you are searching for music and saving the alarm, and after that the alarm is self-contained. Only Full Song mode, which plays the complete track, needs a connection at wake-up time.

Partly. A Wakeify alarm sounds through silent mode and Focus and keeps going until you stop it, even with the app force-quit. The first seconds are deliberately quiet, though, so heavy sleepers should pick a track with a loud opening or a built-in tone, and keep snooze on.

Wakeify has no puzzles, no maths problems and no shake-to-dismiss. If the only thing that gets you out of bed is being forced to scan a barcode in the bathroom, a mission-style alarm app will serve you better.

Yes. Your song still plays even if you force-quit Wakeify the night before. The alarm rings whether or not Wakeify is running, whether or not Spotify is open, and whether or not you are online, and it sounds through silent mode and through a sleep Focus.

Once you save an alarm, closing the app cannot stop it. That holds even if iOS quietly shuts Wakeify down overnight to reclaim memory, which it is entitled to do at any time.

What you do lose by force-quitting is Full Song mode, which needs the app alive, and Wakeify's own in-app ringing screen.

Because that permission is what lets a sound reach you through a locked phone. It is what allows your alarm to cut through silent mode and through a sleep Focus, exactly as your iPhone's own alarms do, and no alarm app can wake you without it.

If you decline the prompt entirely, iOS has no way to make a noise at your alarm time. Wakeify cannot work around that, and nor can any other alarm app.

If you tapped "Don't Allow" by reflex, you can fix it in iOS Settings → Wakeify by turning the permission back on.

A sleep Focus exists to silence your phone overnight, which is the exact window your alarm has to work in. Adding Wakeify to the Focus's allowed apps tells iOS that this one is not to be silenced. Wakeify walks you through it during setup, and it takes about thirty seconds to do later.

1. Open iOS Settings → Focus.
2. Pick the mode you sleep with (Sleep, Do Not Disturb, or your own).
3. Tap Apps → Add App and choose Wakeify.
4. Turn on Time Sensitive Notifications.

A Wakeify alarm sounds through a Focus regardless. This step closes the remaining gap, and it is what lets Wakeify's own screens reach you if you use Full Song mode.

Check that the alarm's toggle is on, that Wakeify has alarm permission in iOS Settings, that Wakeify is allowed in your sleep Focus, and that the ringer volume is up, because alarms use ringer volume, not media volume. Re-saving the alarm fixes most one-off oddities.

In order, the full checklist:

1. Is the alarm actually on? The toggle on its row should be green. A one-time alarm switches itself off after it fires.
2. Permission. iOS Settings → Wakeify → make sure Wakeify is allowed to sound alarms and alert you.
3. Focus. Add Wakeify to your sleep Focus as described above.
4. Volume. Alarms use the ringer volume. Turn off Change with Buttons in iOS Settings → Sounds & Haptics so a stray volume press during the day cannot silence the morning.
5. Wrong sound? Hearing the default tone usually means Wakeify could not use what you picked: choose a specific song rather than an artist or playlist, and save again.
6. Re-save it. Opening the alarm and tapping Save sets it up again from scratch, which clears most one-off problems.
7. Time zone. Alarms fire at the wall-clock time on the device. If you travelled overnight, the time moved with you.

Still wrong? Email [email protected] with your iPhone model and what the alarm was set to. Alarm failures are the one bug class worth interrupting me for.

A little. While an alarm is switched on and Wakeify is still open in the background, the app uses a small amount of power overnight so that it is ready at wake-up time. It is a small draw, but it is not nothing.

If overnight battery matters more to you than that, force-quit Wakeify before bed. The alarm still rings with your song, so nothing is lost by closing the app.

Turning Full Song off does not stop it on its own. Having an alarm switched on is what does.

Open Wakeify, go to Settings, find the Music Services section and tap Disconnect next to the service. For Spotify that deletes the stored login straight away. For Apple Music you can also turn access off in iOS Settings under Privacy & Security, Media & Apple Music.

To be thorough, remove Wakeify from your Spotify apps page as well. Existing alarms keep working, but you will not be able to search that service until you reconnect.

Delete the app. There is no Wakeify account and no Wakeify server, so everything Wakeify holds lives on your device: your alarms, their sounds, your preferences and your Spotify login all go when the app does. Nothing is left behind on a server somewhere.

Before deleting you can disconnect Spotify and switch off Share Usage Analytics in Settings. The only data that ever leaves your phone is anonymous usage and crash statistics, and it is not linked to you, so there is no account of yours to erase. The full detail is in the privacy policy.

Open Wakeify, go to Settings, then Privacy, and switch off Share Usage Analytics. It takes effect immediately, it stops the collection entirely rather than just the app's own recording, and nothing in Wakeify stops working when it is off. The choice is remembered.

What is being collected when it is on: feature-usage counts and crash diagnostics with no song names, no alarm times and no personal data. Every event is listed in the privacy policy.

No. There is no Wakeify sign-up, no password and no profile. The only sign-in anywhere in Wakeify is Spotify's own, and only if you choose to connect it. Apple Music uses the account already signed in on your iPhone. Wakeify never sees either password.

Wakeify is free. Every feature is unlocked: unlimited alarms, repeating schedules, full Spotify and Apple Music search, and Full Song mode. There is no paywall in the Wakeify app, no subscription prompt, no advertising and no account to create.

A Spotify alarm needs nothing more than a free Spotify account. Full Song mode is the only thing that depends on a subscription, an Apple Music one.

Open Wakeify, then Settings, then Display, then Language, and pick from the list. It changes immediately with no relaunch, and the System option hands the choice back to your phone. iOS Settings, then Wakeify, then Language does the same job from outside the app.

Wakeify is translated into English, Spanish (Spain and Mexico), Portuguese (Brazil), French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese, Russian, Turkish and Hindi.

Anything Wakeify does not translate falls back to English. If a translation reads badly in your language, tell me the screen and the wording. That feedback is genuinely useful and quick to act on.

Wakeify runs on iPhone and iPad with iOS or iPadOS 26 or later, and uses a sidebar layout on iPad rather than a stretched phone screen. Every alarm sounds through silent mode and Focus. There is no Android version of Wakeify.

Wakeify is pure black on OLED at night and light during the day.

Yes. Every Wakeify alarm has its own snooze switch and a Snooze Length picker from 1 to 30 minutes, defaulting to the traditional 9. In Full Song mode the Snooze button appears on Wakeify's own screen rather than the usual one, but the length you picked is what it uses.

Email [email protected]. Wakeify is made by one person, so there is no ticket queue: messages go straight to the developer and get read. Say what you expected and what happened instead, and include your iPhone model. Alarm failures get answered first.

For a feature request, describe the morning you are trying to fix rather than the feature you think you need; it usually leads somewhere better. Start an email.