The alarm feature found in your iPhone’s native Clock app is particularly useful when you need to wake up at a specific time every morning, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to say that Apple could make iOS’ alarm interface a bit more intuitive.
iOS developer Joshua Seltzer recognized some of the inadequacies that are present in the iPhone’s native alarm interface, and to help combat those shortcomings, has just released a new jailbreak tweak called Sleeper in Cydia.
Right out of the box, Sleeper augments iOS’ native alarm interface with the following primary features:
- Customize the snooze period for a specific alarm with a specific time
- Skip an upcoming alarm by unlocking your device shortly before it fires
- Skip alarms from firing on specific dates/holidays
Curious about how it all ties together? Check out the developer’s demo video below:
Being that we use the native alarm interface all the time, these improvements are welcomed in all capacities. For example, we often find that the default snooze time isn’t long enough to get any noticeable sleep in between alarms, so being able to lengthen the snooze time to our satisfaction is particularly useful.
As for the alarm-skipping features, this is something that Apple should have implemented out of the box. After all, who wants to wake up for a work alarm on Christmas morning (or some other holiday) after forgetting to turn the alarm off manually? You can also skip specific times in addition to dates.
Lastly, the ability to skip an alarm by unlocking your device shortly before the alarm rings is also particularly handy. Essentially, unlocking your device within a pre-defined period of time before your alarm goes off tells your handset that you’re already awake and that sounding the alarm would be redundant and unnecessary. Why didn’t Apple think of that?
In case you haven’t already noticed, each of Sleeper’s features are integrated directly into Apple’s native alarm interface in the Clock app, so you won’t have to fiddle with any learning curves that are typically associated with third-party interfaces. Setting your ideal skip and snooze times is as easy as visiting the alarm in question and configuring a couple of combo boxes:
Likewise, choosing dates is fairly straightforward:
In case there was any confusion, Sleeper is compatible with standard alarms and with Apple’s new Bedtime alarms. With that in mind, the tweak provides a much nicer alarm experience in a seamless manner that works with even the latest features from some of the most recent software updates.
If you regularly use the alarm function on your iPhone, then you probably have a lot to gain from using the new Sleeper tweak. If you’re interested in trying it, then you can download it for $0.99 from the Havoc repository. The tweak works with all jailbroken iOS 8-14 devices and its source code is available on the developer’s GitHub for those interested in learning about what makes it tick.
What has been your favorite feature mentioned regarding Sleeper? Let us know by dropping a comment in the section below.