I snooze ten times every morning
The alarm goes off, you hit snooze, and forty minutes later you're still in bed. Here's why it keeps happening, and how to make snooze stop being an option once it has had its turn.
If you snooze ten times, you're not lazy. The snooze button is built to win. Beyond Alarm fixes this by limiting your snoozes and then refusing to stop until you've done something you can't do in bed.
Why it happens
Snoozing is very common. Robbins and colleagues looked at more than three million nights logged in a sleep-tracking app and found that 55.6% of sleep sessions ended in a snooze alarm, with 2.4 presses on average. Ten presses is just the far end of something most people do.
The trouble is who makes the choice. In the first minutes after waking you are dealing with sleep inertia: the parts of the brain that weigh up "get up now" against "five more minutes" are slower to come back online than the parts that move your thumb. Snooze is one tap, and a half-awake hand can tap long before you've really decided anything.
Every snooze is a fresh choice, and the sleepy version of you makes the same choice every time. Setting more alarms doesn't help. It just gives you more chances to say no. We compared the two approaches in multiple alarms vs snoozing.
The fix: Beyond Alarm
The fix is to decide once, the night before, while you're awake.
A snooze limit. Each alarm in Beyond Alarm has its own snooze interval and Snooze limit. Set it to one or two and that's all you get. When they're used up, the snooze option is gone.
A wake-up mission. After that, the alarm only stops when you finish a mission. There are eleven, and the ones that work best for snoozers can't be done lying down:
- Push-ups, squats or jumping jacks, counted on the device by the camera
- Photo mission: take a photo of a spot you registered, like the bathroom sink
- Scan a code: a barcode or QR code you've stuck somewhere away from your bed
- Walk it off: a set number of steps
You can stack up to five missions on one alarm.
Wake-up Check (Android). If you finish the mission and get back into bed, Wake-up Check comes back 1 to 10 minutes later. Ignore it and the full alarm rings again.
Streaks. On a repeating alarm, every morning you finish the mission adds to a streak. A streak you can see gives you a reason to get up that a snooze button never will.
All of this is free during the current promotion. Pro just removes the ads.
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.
Set it up tonight
- Open Beyond Alarm, tap + and choose Alarm (or tap an existing alarm to edit it).
- Set the time and the repeat days.
- Under Wake-up mission, add a mission. Choose Photo mission, Scan a code, Walk it off or one of the workouts. Set up photo and scan missions now, while you're awake.
- Tap Snooze. Choose an Interval and set Snooze limit to 1 or 2, or switch snooze off altogether.
- On Android, turn on Wake-up check and choose how many minutes later it should follow up.
- Turn on Morning lockout too if the next problem is your phone. See I lose my first hour to my phone.
- Tap Save.
Tomorrow you'll get the snoozes you allowed yourself, and then you'll be standing up.
Related
Common questions
Why can't I stop hitting snooze?
Because every snooze is a new decision, made by the half-awake version of you that wants more sleep. A snooze limit takes that decision away. Once the limit is used up, Beyond Alarm only stops when you finish a mission.
Can I limit how many times I snooze?
Yes. In Beyond Alarm, open the alarm, tap Snooze and choose a Snooze limit of 1, 2, 3, 5 or 10 times, or turn snooze off. New alarms start at 3 snoozes of 5 minutes.
Is snoozing bad for you?
The research is mixed. One lab study of habitual snoozers found a short snooze didn't push them into deep sleep. The bigger cost is usually the late start and the rushed morning, not the sleep itself.
What is the best mission to stop me snoozing?
Pick one you can't finish lying down. Push-ups, a photo of a spot in another room, scanning a code stuck by the kettle, or walking a set number of steps all get you out of bed.
Beyond Alarm
An alarm that keeps ringing until you’ve actually moved — then blocks the apps that pull you back to bed. Free to start, no account.
More fix your morning
I sleep through every alarm
Five alarms and you still sleep through them. Make waking up mean standing up, not just hearing a sound.
I turn off my alarm in my sleep
You wake late with no memory of switching it off. Put a task between your thumb and the off button.
I scroll in bed every morning
Alarm off, one app open, thirty minutes gone. Get out of bed first, with the apps shut when you do.
I lose my first hour to my phone
You're up on time, then an hour vanishes into feeds and messages. Lock that first hour in for yourself.
It's exam week and I can't stop checking my phone
Notes open, phone in hand every five minutes. Lock it for the whole session, with no stop button.
I can't focus at work because of my phone
Ten minutes into a task, the phone is back in your hand. Lock it for a set stretch, with no stop button.
My alarm didn't go off
You set it, it never rang. Usually a battery setting on Android, and a two-minute check finds it.
I work nights and can't wake up in the afternoon
You sleep by day and the 3pm alarm feels like 3am. An alarm and block setup built around your shifts.
I stay up scrolling at night
Tired at 11pm, still scrolling at 1am. Give the night an ending you don't have to enforce yourself.