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Quick start

This guide will help you set up your first alarm and get familiar with Simple Alarm Clock’s powerful features.

Setting up your first alarm

1

Open the app

Launch Simple Alarm Clock from your app drawer. You’ll see the main alarms list screen.
2

Create a new alarm

Tap the floating action button (+ icon) to create a new alarm.
3

Set the time

Use the phone-style keyboard time picker to enter your desired wake-up time. No more spinning through hours!
4

Configure options

Customize your alarm with the available options (detailed below).
5

Save and enable

Save your alarm. Make sure it’s enabled (toggle should be on).
Your alarm will automatically reschedule after device reboots, so you don’t need to worry about losing your alarms.

Key features to try

Pre-alarm (gentle wake-up)

The pre-alarm feature plays a low volume alarm before your main alarm time, helping you wake up during a light sleep phase. How to use:
  • Enable pre-alarm in your alarm settings
  • Set it to start 30 minutes before your main alarm (recommended)
  • If you’re in a light sleep phase, you’ll wake up feeling more refreshed
30 minutes is typically enough to catch a light sleep phase, but you can adjust this based on your sleep patterns.

Volume fade in

Instead of jarring you awake with full volume, the alarm gradually increases in volume. Benefits:
  • Gentler wake-up experience
  • Vibration starts only after fade-in completes
  • More natural transition from sleep to waking

Snooze options

Simple Alarm Clock offers two ways to snooze:

Quick snooze

Single tap on the snooze button to snooze for your preset duration

Custom snooze

Long-click the snooze button to choose a specific snooze time with the time picker

Dismiss protection

To prevent accidentally dismissing your alarm while half asleep: Long-click the dismiss button to turn off the alarm. A quick tap won’t dismiss it.
Make sure you long-click to dismiss, not just tap. This feature is designed to prevent you from turning off your alarm without realizing it.

Customizing alarm sounds

You can use any audio file on your device as an alarm sound:
  1. When creating or editing an alarm, tap the ringtone option
  2. Browse your device’s audio files
  3. Select your preferred sound
  4. The app will request READ_MEDIA_AUDIO permission if needed

Enabling vibration

To make your alarm vibrate:
  1. Open alarm settings
  2. Enable the vibration option
  3. Vibration will start after the volume fade-in completes

Tips for best results

Use pre-alarm

Set the pre-alarm 30 minutes early for a gentler wake-up

Test your alarm

Set a test alarm a few minutes ahead to verify volume and sound

Check permissions

Ensure all required permissions are granted in Android settings

Disable battery optimization

Prevent Android from killing the app in the background

Troubleshooting

Alarm not firing

If your alarm isn’t going off:
  1. Check that the alarm is enabled (toggle is on)
  2. Verify you’ve granted the “Alarms & reminders” permission (Android 12+)
  3. Disable battery optimization for Simple Alarm Clock
  4. Make sure Do Not Disturb allows alarms

No sound playing

  1. Check your device volume (not just media volume)
  2. Verify the alarm sound file still exists if using a custom sound
  3. Grant the READ_MEDIA_AUDIO permission

Alarm dismissed itself

Check your alarm settings - some alarm configurations may have auto-dismiss timers.

Next steps

Now that you’ve set up your first alarm, explore the app’s settings to customize:
  • Default snooze duration
  • Volume fade-in duration
  • Pre-alarm settings
  • Theme preferences
Access settings from the main menu (three dots) in the alarms list.
Remember: All settings are preserved even after device reboots, so you only need to configure them once.

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