How to Use Wake Alarm Feature on Your iPhone and Master Your Sleep Cycle

BY Khamosh Pathak

Published 17 Jul 2016

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iOS 10 brought a lot of little things. One of these features was tucked under the new “Bedtime” tab in the redesigned Clock app (that dark mode looks amazing though). Wake Alarm feature is simple. Basically, you tell the Clock app what time you usually wake up, how much time you’d like to sleep and the app will take care of the rest.

Here’s how to use this feature to create a strict sleep routine.

Setup A Wake Alarm

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Open the Clock app in iOS 10 and tap the “Bedtime” tab from the bottom.

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You’ll now be shown a step by step process for setting up a wake alarm. The first screen introduces you to what the wake alarm is.

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On the next screen, select what time you would like to wake up, and which days of the week the alarm should go off.

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After that, select how many hours of sleep you want.

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Then select how many minutes before your usual bedtime would you like a reminder that it’s time to go to bed. This will show up as a silent notification and you can decide to go to bed at that time or snooze the reminder.

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After that, you can select a wake-up sound.

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You’ll then see a preview of the sleep tracking feature and that’s it. Your wake clock alarm is setup.

Customizing the Wake Alarm

The wake alarm screen is one of the most beautiful and well thought out screens in iOS 10.

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You’ll see a circular clock dial in the middle. This will show what time you’re supposed to go to bed and what time you wake up. The time between them will be highlighted in yellow.

Now here’s the really cool part. You can tap on one the times and move your finger around to change it on the fly. So changing the wake alarm for the next day by an hour only takes half a second.

From the top of this screen, you can disable the wake alarm. And in the bottom, you’ll see a snapshot of the sleep analysis.

The app does some very basic sleep analysis using the iPhone’s sensors.

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You can also customize the alarm volume, independent of the ringer volume. From the wake alarm screen, tap on “Options”.

Then from the “Volume” section, use the slider to increase or decrease the volume.

What’s Your Sleep System Like?

Do you use a sleep tracking app or a FitBit? What kind of app do you use for alarm? Share with us in the comments below.

Check out our iOS 10 coverage below:

And also our macOS Sierra coverage: