iHome Sleep – The Best Alarm Clock App

iHome Sleep – Alarm Clock App

Our phones are saturated with apps and with the huge selection of available apps it makes it harder to choose and decide on what the best app to use is, let alone which one to spend your hard owned cash on. But, when it comes to alarm clock apps I have done my homework and hands down the best app is iHome Sleep. It’s available for both iOS and Android. Although I don’t have any experience with the Android version, I imagine it’s very similar if not the same as the iOS version.

It all started a few years back when I thought it was time to free up some valuable real estate on my night stand and decided it was time to get rid of my alarm clock and just use my phone since it was already on my night stand every night charging. So I scoured through the app store and downloaded all the alarm clock apps I could find that seemed at least half decent and night after night I tried them until I finally found iHome Sleep. I have since only turned back once; during a major iOS upgrade (iOS6 to iOS7) where iHome was slacking on updating the app to properly function on the new iPhones and the equivalent software. Those were some frustrating months. If this isn’t enough to convince you then let me sell you on this marvelous application. Skip to the end if you just want a quick list of the features this application has to offer.

We can start off with the fact that it’s free. Yes, you read that correctly the application is free, although it does have some non-intrusive ads at the bottom which can be removed for a minimal 99 cents. Then we can move on to the beautiful and extremely easy to use interface. When you launch the app you’re presented with a screen that shows you the time and temperature. If you swipe left you’ll be presented with the settings menu, where you can change the weather to show in either Fahrenheit or Celsius, or not show at all. You can swap the background image and turn on auto-lock. You can set a sleep timer and adjust the volume and screen brightness. Then you scroll down a bit and you’re presented with the wake up options. Adjust the wake up volume accordingly, set a wake timer to gradually wake you up, a snooze duration, turn on the shake to snooze option and my second favorite part about this app, you can have it show your night stats upon wake up. Yep! It tracks your sleep. At the bottom of the settings menu you can create an account to sync your sleep stats and you also have the option of clearing the stats as well as viewing their privacy policy. Then we can swipe right to get back to the main screen and then right again to get to the alarm section. You can create as many alarms as you’d like with several options. You can have the alarms repeat on certain days, you can set a bedtime sound and you can set a wake up sound. Now here’s my favorite part of this app which no other alarm clock app does. You can wake up to the radio using the TuneIn radio app. So not only can you set your default tones, but you can also select music stored on your device, peaceful zen sounds they offer or your favorite radio station (subject to availability on the TuneIn app). No other alarm clock app allows waking up to radio stations. Once you have your sounds selected you can then save that alarm and head back to the alarm menu. If your alarms are not set to repeat you would just manually turn them on at night before going to sleep which is what I do since my wake up times vary everyday. Lastly in this menu, you can also start a nap. So now we head back to the main screen and finally we’ll swipe up from the bottom to be presented with our stats. You can view stats for the last 24 hours, last 7 days, 30 days or 12 months, you can even select a day by day view option that breaks down bed time, wake time, snooze time/s and sleep time.

With all these capabilities and for the low price of free you just can not beat this application. You can also pair it up with an iHome device should you decide to purchase one or already have one.

Features

• Free (remove ads for $0.99)
• Time
• Weather
• Sleep statistics and editable sleep log
• Sleep and Wake timers (Gentle Wake)
• Snooze duration
• Sleep and Wake volume
• Screen brightness
• Full screen clock display with custom photo backgrounds
• Multiple Alarms
• Nap alarms
• Wake and Sleep to iPod library
• Wake and Sleep to Internet Radio
• Wake and Sleep reminders