Once again, I’ve started to look seriously into spending less time lying down. To limit myself to 9 hours a night in bed, I re-installed AutoWake. That app is poorly reviewed, but has a somewhat rare feature where you can set a timer as an alarm.
On both my trial runs, it worked alright. The alarm went off at the right time. Its main fault was that it used up a ton of battery life (i.e. 69% on Wednesday). Some other features were also buggy. I was unable to set a music alarm; the spoken alarm seemed to get confused by my iPhone settings. (It went off a second time after I took my iPhone out of Sleep Mode.)
All in all, AutoWake would work if I went back to sleeping with my phone plugged in all night. Being the perfectionist I am, I couldn’t help but look for better alternatives. Following online recommendations, I bought Timer+. That app is designed to allow multiple timers at once (aka a feature I’m surprised iOS is lacking) and many use it as their sleep alarm.
Timer+ was a disappointment. The main problem is that its notification only goes off a single time if the app is in the background. Leaving the app running all night would likely use up a ton of battery as well. However, the purchase wasn’t a total waste of money; having a separate timer app allows me to leave my built-in iPhone timer set to 9 hours for sleep.
PS: the default options for Timer+ (i.e. Tea, Roasted Turkey, Laundry) tricked me into believing I had downloaded the app previously around Thanksgiving; my App Store purchase history proved that wrong.
