Switch off your alarm by saying a line out loud.
Alarmun is an iPhone alarm that ends with a sentence. You choose the line the night before, and in the morning the alarm puts it on a dark screen and listens. Words turn green as you say them, in the order they are written.
The film is one take in the iOS Simulator. The words were fed to the recogniser from a script, because the Simulator has no speech model; the matching, the highlighting and every screen are the app's own. Everything on this page was shot in one morning, and the times in the margin are the clocks on those screens.
Say the line and watch the words light up.
This is the app's screen with the app's matching rules, running here in the page. Press Speak and read the line aloud. The microphone starts when you press the button and stops when the line is done.
Say aloud
Snooze for 1 minutes
The listening is done by your browser, which sends the audio to Google in Chrome and to Apple in Safari. On the phone it works differently: Alarmun recognises speech on the device itself.
How close is close enough. Half asleep you say “been” instead of “bean”. The app compares what it heard with the line letter by letter and takes the word when it is close enough: a short English word has to be almost exact (75% of it), a word of 12 letters or more can be half wrong (50%). Words count in order, the next one is looked for among the following 5 that it heard, and anything said in between is ignored. Numbers are matched against their spelled-out form.
Pick what you will have to say tomorrow.
Set the time, then pick a line: 113 of them in six collections, or write your own. Swipe the row of suggestions aside and the whole library opens. The list groups alarms by when they will actually ring, so today, tomorrow and other days are three separate piles.
Why a sentence and not a tap. A tap can be done in your sleep, by a hand that will not remember it. A sentence cannot: to say it you have to find the words, and by the last one you are awake. Lines you write yourself go to My Collection and follow you over iCloud.
Look at the alarm and recite.
It is a system alarm, so it cuts through silent mode and any Focus, and the line itself is the title on the lock screen. Press Speak and the app opens with the line in the dark. You can still slide to stop, the same as with any alarm.
The first plan did not work. I wanted to leave the phone across the room and shout at it from under the duvet. iOS keeps the microphone shut while the phone is locked, so that plan died on the first evening. AlarmKit in iOS 26.0 gave outside apps a real alarm with a button of my own on it, and the button became Speak.
Wake up in the language the line is written in.
The collections come in eight languages, and the app chooses the recogniser from the line itself rather than from a setting. Switch the collection language and the whole library switches with it.
Choose what you will have to say at seven in the morning.
Six collections, 113 lines in English and 123 in Russian. Here is the first line of each, as it comes in the app.
Morning Grump
Well ain't that a kick in the pants, here comes Monday again!
18+, a separate purchase, $0.99Morning Blues
Stumbling through the morning fog like a lost soul searching for that blasted alarm clock.
Sunshine & Rainbows
I'm the most wonderful little bean in the universe!
Tongue Twisters
She sells seashells by the seashore, surely she sells seashore shells!
Haiku
An old silent pond... A frog jumps into the pond— Splash! Silence again.
Bright Spirit
What a splendid morning! The sun rises and my heart sings like a lark in the meadow!
Say hello to a new day.
Free with 2 alarms switched on. 10 alarms cost $1.99 a month, unlimited $3.99 once. iPhone and iPad, iOS 26.0 and later.
