Math alarm app — solve sums to turn your alarm off

A math alarm app keeps ringing until you solve a few sums correctly. The pick is Beyond Alarm: its free Math Problems mission asks for 2 to 5 problems, five difficulty levels, and a keypad option so you can't guess. Start at three problems on Medium.

The short version:

• Beyond Alarm is the pick — free Math Problems mission on Android and iPhone, no internet needed.
• Three problems on Medium (two-digit adding and subtracting) is the right start.
• Tapping one of three answers is quicker; typing on the keypad can't be guessed.
• A wrong tap locks the answers for five seconds, so guessing doesn't pay.
• Maths wakes your brain, not your legs — pair it with a walking mission if you drift back to sleep.

How a math alarm works

When the alarm rings, the stop button is replaced by a sum. Answer it, and the next one appears; answer the number you set, and the alarm stops.

The point is that arithmetic needs the part of you that is awake. A half-asleep thumb can hit "Stop" by reflex, but it can't work out 64 − 27.

Beyond Alarm's version is called Math Problems, and it carries the "BEST" tag in the mission picker. It's free — every mission is free right now, and Pro only removes the ads. Everything runs on the phone, so it works in airplane mode.

By default the alarm goes quiet while you're solving. Stall for 20 seconds without a right answer and it comes back, so you can't solve one sum and doze off on the second.

The five difficulty levels, exactly

Most math alarms say "easy, medium, hard" and leave it there. These are the sums Beyond Alarm's code actually generates at each setting:

There's a twist: every third problem steps up a level. On Medium, your fourth and fifth sums are times tables. On Very hard they become two-digit times two-digit, like 27 × 14 — which is why five problems on Very hard is a genuinely long morning.

Tap or type: which to choose

You choose how answers go in when you set the mission up, not at 6am.

• Options (the default): three answers on screen, tap the right one. Quick, and easy to hit half awake.
• Keypad: type the number, then press the tick. Harder to get past, and there's nothing to guess from.

With three options, guessing is the obvious shortcut — tap, tap, tap, and one of them is right. We built a penalty for that: a wrong tap dims the row and locks it for five seconds, with a countdown that says "Read the sum". Reading the sum is quicker than waiting it out, so after a morning or two you stop guessing.

The keypad has its own detail worth knowing. Nothing is checked until you press the tick, and a wrong answer stays on screen, marked wrong, until your next key. We changed it to work that way after an early version checked answers as you typed and could pass a wrong one — so a typo now costs you a retry, never a free pass.

How many problems to set

The range is 2 to 5, and the default is 3. A good rule:

Keep it under a minute. A mission you dread is a mission you'll eventually switch off the night before. Try it first: the mission's setup screen has a Preview button that runs the real thing, so you can feel how long Hard takes before it's 6am.

Beyond Alarm

Beyond Alarm does this part for you: the alarm will not switch off until you have actually moved, and the apps you pick stay locked afterwards.

When maths isn't enough

Maths has one weakness: you can do it lying down. It reliably wakes your brain, but plenty of people solve three sums under the duvet and are asleep again ten minutes later. We've ranked every mission by how hard it is to fake half asleep, and maths sits in the brain tier for exactly that reason.

The fix is to stack missions. One alarm in Beyond Alarm can carry up to five, run in order. Maths first to clear the fog, then Walk it off — an alarm that makes you walk a set number of steps — and you're out of bed before you've had a chance to negotiate.

Maths is also the safety net. If another mission can't run when the alarm rings — say the step counter's permission was switched off — Beyond Alarm asks whether to grant it again or solve maths instead, so you're never stuck with an alarm you can't stop.

Math alarm apps compared

Details for the other apps are from their own listings at the time of writing.

Beyond Alarm is our pick: the most control over the sums, a keypad that can't be guessed, and the rest of the morning covered too. Morning Lockout keeps the apps that pull you back to bed shut after the alarm, and Phone Block's Strict mode — no stop button until the timer ends — is free after one short ad. For the wider field, see the alarm apps that make you get up.

Try it tonight

Set an alarm two minutes from now with three problems on Medium, and let it ring. If you got through without really reading the sums, switch to the keypad.

If it took longer than a minute, drop a level. Then add a mission that makes you stand up behind it.