Apps

Hands-on: ‘Midnight Alarm’ packs powerful features that Apple’s Clock app is missing [Giveaway]

Ian Zelbo | May 27 2023 - 10:32 am PT

Andrew Zheng, an incoming Apple intern, found Apple’s alarm function to be missing critical features and found that most alternatives on the App Store were poorly designed, ad-ridden, and missing key features. Because of this, he created Midnight Alarm, a feature-packed and wonderfully designed alarm app.

Free features

While you need to pay the $1.49 a month or $24.99 one-time purchase to get all of the amazing features of Midnight, the free version still provides many features over Apple’s offering, and unlike the countless alarm apps on the App Store, no ads.

Live Activities support
Widgets
Schedule alarms for later on specific dates or every day during a range
Change the alarm volume independently of your ringtone (e.g., normal volume ringtone and louder alarm)
Time preview – see the time so you don’t accidentally set alarms for the middle of the night
Custom dynamic backgrounds that adjust based on the time
Change the snooze / dismiss button placement by dragging
Custom snooze duration and alarm ring duration
Import alarm sounds from Files
Delete multiple alarms at once
Swap snooze and stop buttons

Midnight Alarm has received special permission from Apple to use critical alerts, so even when your phone is on silent, you can still hear your alarms as normal. This is quite different from the many other alarm apps on the market, as many actually play a silent audio file as a trick to hear alarms on mute, which consequentially drains the battery.

Premium features

Organization

Apple’s alarm function has been notoriously bad at organization, and it is very easy to have a never-ending list of alarms from the past, but Midnight solves this in two ways. The free version gives you the option to delete multiple alarms at once, a surprising omission from Apple’s offering, and with premium, it gives you the ability to put your alarms in folders and organize them per category.

Calendar Integration

Along with being able to schedule an alarm for a specific date, with premium, Midnight brings full integration with Apple Calendar, Google Calendar, and custom .ics calendars and allows you to place your alarms on a calendar interface. With just a toggle, it will add the alarm to your list in the app, and sync so the event can be seen from all of your calendar apps.

Weather Previews and Solar Background

Midnight gives you the weather at the time of your alarm right on the home page and has a beautiful UI showing a solar graph. The sunrise and sunset data from the solar graph is accurate and calculated from an algorithm by the United States Naval Observatory.

Download ringtones from YouTube (Coming soon)

In addition to uploading your own files as ringtones, with premium, you will soon be able to download music directly from YouTube and set it as your alarm.