15 Best Alarm Clock Apps

Smartwatches may be getting more popular, especially with the new features delivered by the likes of the Apple Watch Series 4 and Samsung Galaxy Watch. But for most of us, the smartphone remains our time keeper and alarm clock of choice. The latest and greatest clock apps come loaded with extra features such as highly configurable alarms, sleep logs and varied plugins. Make sure you never wake up late for the new year with the best clock apps for Android and iOS. (Image Credit: Monkey Business Images/Shutterstock)

Timely is easily among the most well-designed and functional alarm clocks in the Google Play store, with three-panel experience for setting alarms, a main clock screen and a stopwatch and timer mode. The alarm pane allows you to quickly set alarms by swiping and tapping from the side of the screen, with support for multiple simultaneous alarms. Each alarm can be further customized with labels and different tunes. You can even add a challenge (such as a math problem or matching minigame).

Alarmy (Android, iOS) calls itself "the world's most annoying alarm." When users set an alarm, they also set a location that they need to take a picture of, otherwise, the alarm just won't shut off. A popular idea is to set your bathroom sink as your target location, forcing you to get out of bed and over to the sink so you can get a start on the day. Other options include the ability to use your music as your alarm tone and a "shake mode" in iOS for turning the alarm of with a number of shakes.

AMDroid combines a neat and flat Material aesthetic with a raft of useful alarm settings to make a great alarm clock app for oversleepers. Users can set multiple alarms, each with its own independent settings, from one-shot to recurring alarms and countdown timers. You can add a gentle, pre-wake alarm to slowly wake you up, as well as wakeup challenges to make sure that you're actually conscious. Users can configure alarms to respect public holidays, add geofences, and even include a bedtime notification to remind you to get enough sleep for a particular alarm or event.

If you want to start out your mornings with a daily dose of cute, check out AlarmMon (Android, iOS), a clock app that fully embraces the cute aesthetic of stickers and cartoon characters to help wake you up. Users can set a variety of alarm types, from noisy or quite alarms, to more involved alarms such as ones that incorporate characters and games to make sure you're awake. In addition to the free and premium alarms, AlarmMon can also display the weather and news at the end of your alarm. A cute feature is that AlarmMon can log your alarm behavior, recording how long it took you to turn off the alarm at particular times and days.

FreakyAlarm wants to make sure that you're awake and active, mentally and physically, rather than lazing about hitting the snooze button in bed. To that end, the iOS app comes with a variety of minigames and annoying sounds to add to the alarm clock mix or your wake-up music, ensuring that you're at least awake enough to solve basic logic problems before shutting off the snooze. A randomizer option keeps the wake-up alarms and games from being too repetitive, and you can also set the app to require you to scan barcodes or photograph objects before shutting off.

Early Bird Alarm Clock is a neat multipurpose alarm clock on Android that offers a handy mix of alarm features to help you get up every morning. Users can create multiple recurring alarms (with the option to cycle through a number of alarm sounds) and different methods of turning off the alarm, such as math problems, QR codes, or voice recognition. The app also displays the weather and your upcoming calendar events once you switch off the alarm, giving you a head start for your workday. An in-app purchase removes ads and gives you a clock widget to add to your home screen.

Providing more than just an alarm clock app, Chronus is a multipurpose array of home and lockscreen widgets providing users with multifunction widgets for your Android phone. Users can configure the home and lock screen widgets to display the clock, upcoming alarms, calendar events, tasks, and more. The app already comes loaded with a wealth of options in the free tier, and a premium upgrade unlocks more features such as unlimited Dashclock extensions, stock alerts, and support for Exchange, Evernote, and Todoist tasks.