The alarm that stops when you're awake. Not when you swipe.
Every other alarm asks a sleeping person to make a decision, and a sleeping person decides to sleep. Auren doesn't ask. It stops when you've done something — eight push-ups, a subtraction, twenty steps away from the bed — and if you dismiss it, it comes back in fifty seconds.
Auren is an iPhone alarm that will not switch off until you complete a short task. Push-ups counted by the proximity sensor, mental arithmetic, finding an object through the camera, or simply walking twenty steps. Dismiss it and it returns about fifty seconds later, up to twenty times. It rings through Silent mode and Focus, survives a restart, and never touches the network between the moment you fall asleep and the moment you are up.
Why this one works when the others didn't
Task alarms have existed for a decade. These three details are what separate an alarm you beat in a week from one you don't.
The chase chain
When you set an alarm, a chain of up to twenty follow-up alarms is scheduled behind it, about fifty seconds apart. The whole chain is cancelled only when your mission is confirmed complete. Dismissing the alarm doesn't end it — it buys you fifty seconds. The decision to get up stops being available.
The step gate
No mission counts until your phone's pedometer has recorded twenty steps since the alarm fired. You can fake push-ups lying down. You can photograph the target object the night before. You cannot fake walking away from the bed, and that is the point at which people stop going back to sleep.
The sunrise ramp
The ringing screen opens at 8% brightness in a warm amber and climbs to full white over fifteen seconds. Bright light suppresses melatonin, so this genuinely helps you wake — while sparing a half-open eye the first three seconds of it.
Four kinds of thinking, so your brain can't learn the trick
Repeat one task for three weeks and you will start completing it in your sleep — measurably. Variety across different kinds of task is the mechanism, not the number of tasks.
| Axis | Missions | How it's verified |
|---|---|---|
| Physical | Push-ups, Squats, Shake, Walk | Proximity sensor, motion sensors and the pedometer. Push-ups are counted by laying the phone on the floor and breaking the proximity beam with your chest — it works in a pitch-dark room, needs no camera permission and cannot be faked by bobbing your shoulders. |
| Visual | Object Hunt, Sky Photo, Bed Photo, QR Scan | Apple's on-device Vision framework. Find a specific object somewhere in the house, photograph the sky, prove you left the bed, or scan a code you taped to the kettle last night. No image ever leaves the phone. |
| Cognitive | Math, Memory, Word Unscramble, Reverse Taps | Pure logic, no sensors and no permissions. Mental arithmetic defaults to two-digit subtraction rather than multiplication — 47 × 8 is unusable when you are half asleep, and an alarm you cannot solve is an alarm you delete. |
| Sensory | Affirmation, Light Level | On-device speech recognition and the ambient light sensor. Light Level is measured against a baseline captured when the alarm fires and needs a threefold increase, so it works in a bright summer bedroom and a dark winter one alike. |
Every verification runs on the device. No photo, recording or motion reading is uploaded or stored.
Built so it cannot quietly fail
It works in airplane mode
There is not one network call between you falling asleep and finishing your mission. Entitlements, alarms and missions are read from local storage. A build-time check blocks network code from ever entering an alarm file, so this cannot quietly regress in a future release.
It rings through Silent and Focus
Built for iOS 26 on AlarmKit, Apple's system alarm framework, so it has the same privileges as the built-in Clock: it sounds through Silent mode, through Focus, survives a device restart, and presents full-screen on the Lock Screen.
Alarms anchored to the sun, not the clock
Six solar presets — sunrise, civil dawn, a set number of minutes before sunrise, golden hour, solar noon, and a custom solar depression angle — recalculated on device every day, anywhere on Earth, with no network. At northern latitudes sunrise moves about four minutes a day, so a fixed alarm drifts out of step with daylight within weeks.
Bedtime Check
An evening audit of everything that could make tomorrow's alarm fail silently: volume, permissions, battery, connected headphones. Most alarm failures are not bugs — they are a setting that changed at 4pm and was discovered at 9am.
Verification that lets you off, not shuts you out
Every check is deliberately biased toward accepting rather than rejecting, and after three failed attempts an escape hatch opens. A false rejection at six in the morning is unforgivable; a false acceptance costs nothing, because you are already standing up.
English, العربية and Español
Full localisation including proper right-to-left layout for Arabic, with a matched Arabic typeface and the spacing corrections that connected script requires. Most alarm apps in this category ship English only.
Six in the morning, in detail
Swipe →
What's already being built
Auren ships in waves rather than disappearing for six months. Currently in development, in roughly this order:
Pact
Link your streak to a friend's. If either of you misses a morning, the other is told. The most effective accountability mechanism there is, and the least comfortable.
Widgets & Live Activity
Tomorrow's alarm and your current streak on the Lock Screen, and the mission countdown as a Live Activity while the chase chain is running.
Roulette & the adaptive engine
A random mission each morning, plus an engine that watches your wake latency and changes the task as soon as it detects you completing one on autopilot.
Apple Watch
Haptic-only waking, so you can get up at five without waking whoever you share a bed with.
Alarms for heavy sleepers, answered
What is the best alarm app for a really heavy sleeper?
The category that works is the task-gated alarm, and Auren is the strictest version of it. An ordinary alarm asks a sleeping person to make a decision, and a sleeping person decides to sleep. Auren removes the decision: the alarm does not stop until you complete a physical or mental task, and if you dismiss it, it comes back about fifty seconds later, up to twenty times.
What actually happens if I just swipe it away?
Nothing good. A chain of up to twenty follow-up alarms was scheduled the moment you set the alarm, and only completing your mission cancels it. Dismissing buys you roughly fifty seconds of silence. The app does not rely on detecting your dismissal, which is precisely why it cannot be defeated by dismissing it.
Does it ring if my phone is on silent or Focus?
Yes. Auren is built on AlarmKit, the framework Apple introduced for exactly this, which gives it the same privileges as the built-in Clock app: it sounds through Silent mode and through Focus, and it survives a restart.
Does it need an internet connection?
No, and this is the single most important engineering commitment in the app. There are zero network calls between you going to sleep and completing your mission. The app behaves identically in airplane mode. Alarm apps that check a server at the moment of ringing can hang on a loading screen while the alarm sounds, and that is a failure you only discover once.
What if I physically can't do push-ups?
Choose a different mission — there are fourteen across four categories, and three of them (Math, Memory and Reverse Taps) need no permissions and no physical capability at all. Every alarm always has a completable mission available; nothing can leave you trapped.
What is the twenty-step rule?
No mission counts as finished until your phone's pedometer has recorded twenty steps since the alarm fired. It exists because every other anti-cheat measure can be beaten from inside the bed, and this one cannot. It is also the moment most people stop being able to fall back asleep.
Can I set an alarm for sunrise rather than a fixed time?
Yes. Six solar presets are available — sunrise, civil dawn, a chosen number of minutes before sunrise, golden hour, solar noon, and a custom solar depression angle — recalculated on your device each day for your location, with no network connection. Useful for photographers, runners, outdoor workers, anyone at a northern latitude, and anyone whose schedule follows daylight rather than the clock.
Does it support Arabic?
Yes, with full right-to-left layout, a matched Arabic typeface and the spacing corrections connected script needs. Auren ships in English, Arabic and Spanish.
Is it free?
Yes, free to download. The free tier gives you unlimited alarms and three missions, and an optional rewarded video unlocks seven more missions for one alarm at a time. Pro is $6.99 a month or $29.99 a year and unlocks all fourteen missions, removes ads, and adds Streak Insurance and cloud backup. No advertisement or subscription pitch ever appears during an alarm or a mission, and no paywall appears between midnight and midday.
Does it track my sleep?
No. Sleep tracking is a different product and doing it badly is worse than not doing it. Auren measures one thing — how long it takes you to get from the alarm firing to finishing your mission — and uses that to notice when your brain has started completing a task on autopilot.
Is the camera or microphone data uploaded?
No. Camera, audio and motion data are processed in memory on the phone and discarded. They are never uploaded and never stored. Object recognition uses Apple's on-device Vision framework and speech checks run on-device.
Is there an Android version or an Apple Watch app?
Neither today; Auren is iPhone-only. Apple Watch support, with haptic-only waking for shared beds, is on the roadmap. Android is not planned until the iPhone app is proven.
You already know you'll sleep through it.
Set one alarm tonight. You'll find out tomorrow whether this is different.
Free · three missions and unlimited alarms · iPhone