Apple’s (not) Alarming iOS issue

So we’re working on an App called Wakey! that delivers users an up-beat video clip each weekday morning.

Wakey! is available for iOS and Android. Mornings never felt so good.

Backed by a talented team of psychologists, TV content creators, interactive designers, developers and researchers, each 9 minute Wakey! episode covers a topic related to mental well-being in a fun, engaging way.

Oh — and we’ve got pretty amazing on-screen talent for a show that’s filmed exclusively for the Wakey! app — there’s Chris from Love Island, AJ Odudu from The Voice and our incomparable anchor Ginger who keeps everyone in line. Safe to say this is a full-on professional production.

Chris Taylor [Love Island] — AJ Odudu [The Voice] and Ginger [‘a helium balloon in the shape of a woman’]

You can grab the iOS version or the Android version — it’s free and we’d love you to play with it and give us your feedback. Note that alarm times are for the UK timezone.

The App is designed to do a few things, but to do them really well.

These are to wake the user up with a lovely video clip and to track their overall sentiments to see if, over time, a fun motivational morning video clip really can improve one’s general well-being.

Waking up is pretty crucial in the user journey. And that’s where we have hit a pretty major problem.

Many iOS users keep Silent Mode switched On — especially at night

We have a Push Messaging system that sends an alert at the time users want to wake up. This alert is visible on the lock screen and also plays a lovely 30 second music clip we’ve had specially written to bring you out of sleep and into wakefulness in a calm fashion.

Push message plays a wake-up alarm — tap the banner to boot the app and watch the morning video

And of course this is all great and users love the App and they really love the content it delivers … except for one thing:

When Silent Mode is On, it’s impossible to play a sound to wake users up.

And let’s face it, for an Alarm App that’s pretty crucial!

There is of course one solution — and that’s to ensure that the iOS handset has Silent Mode switched Off.

Switch Silent Mode to Off and you can hear our lovely wake-up music, but you also hear every other alert from every other app that ever sends you alerts. Just what you don’t want while trying to get a good night’s sleep

“Aha”, I hear you say, “but Apple has special entitlements for Alarm apps”.

Well no, it does not.

Developers can add certain ‘entitlements’ to their apps — but Apple vet each one and will reject apps they don’t think use them correctly.

Apple seems to specifically go out of its way to prevent Alarm apps from functioning, except of course for it’s own built-in Alarm clock.

Apple does have a Critical Alert option to allow Push Messages to ignore the Silent Mode and Do Not Disturb settings — but this is reserved for Medical apps and not for Alarm apps.

Hey Apple — this is super-simple: Just add “Alarm Clock” to the above list

There are a few work-arounds but all of these break Apple guidelines. And we want an App that’s 100% compliant. Eventually any App that sneaks through Apple’s certification process will get caught out and removed from the store.

We want to be good developers and not cheat the system. But we’re currently blocked from providing what users want.

Look — we get it: Apple wants to prevent annoying audio being rammed down users’ ears all the time.

Im general you can’t auto-play a video with audio on — this prevents web pages and apps bugging users with advertising messages. In general, you can’t have an app in the background play an audio clip (it has to be in the foreground first).

But hang on a sec — our users have specifically gone to the App Store to downland an Alarm app. They’ve specifically set an alarm time. They specifically want to be disturbed because that’s what an alarm does!

Surely this is a case where Apple need to add a new ‘Alarm’ entitlement to Push Messages so we can all get on with delivering what users want.

After all, that’s Apple’s goal as well as ours.