In my childhood, my mum was absolutely scared when my school timings were about to change from afternoon to early morning. Fearing that it would be quite the task to wake me up every morning, she used an effective strategy. Instead of scaring the little-me with the time I had to get up, she would subtly remind me of the time that I had to go to sleep. Thus, waking up early was never a problem for me (and a delight for her, I suppose). I now realize that nearly every mum in this world must have done the same thing.
Sooner or later though, there comes a time when mothers may not be around every day to wake us up, but our smartphones sure are. To bed is an alarm app that reminds you to go to sleep, just like she did. The app looks fantastic from the moment you open it. There’s a delightful welcome screen where the app tells you what it can do, and asks for your name and age. The name is used for adding that personal touch to notifications, and keying in how old you are presets the ideal sleep required for your age group. You can change the latter in the Settings menu.
Next, it asks you to choose your wake-up times from Monday through Friday. You can set it up as early as three in the morning till two o’clock in the afternoon. Now these restrictions will not hinder most folks who have typical schedules. But say people in the Retail industry who have to work on weekends or people who work the graveyard shifts will not be able to use this app effectively. We sincerely hope the app developer takes note of this, and hopefully lifts these restrictions so that everybody can use this app.
Once all is set, the main screen shows you how many hours you have till you need to go to bed. The app takes up the entire screen so the time on the status bar isn’t visible, but you can take a quick peek at the current time by pressing-and-holding on the moon. The Alarm-bell icon at the bottom brings up three menus: one to change your weekly wakeup times, one to put the app in ‘vacation mode’, which disables go-to-bed reminders till you turn it off. Lastly, there’s a Settings menu which lets you choose the number of hours you want to sleep, and how prior should it send out a notification.
The app is full of smoothly animated elements that sit above the menus. The typography is delightful to look at and easy to read. To bed is available on the App Store for $0.99 and I believe it is a must-have for people who want to discipline their sleep cycle.
Masthead by PlaceIt.