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The research behind the alarm

What sleep research says about the first minutes after waking, what it doesn't say, and how Morning AI's alarm sounds relate to it. Small studies are called small.

The first half hour

Sleep inertia is “the temporary time of sleepiness, disorientation and impaired cognitive performance experienced upon awakening” [3]. Its strongest effects fall within about 30 minutes of waking, and full recovery does not appear to be complete until at least an hour after [3]. That is the window a morning alarm works in.

Why melodic?

Two 2020 studies by McFarlane and colleagues at RMIT University: in a survey of 50 people, those who rated their alarm as melodic reported less grogginess after waking [1]. In a small at-home experiment with 20 people, the 10 who woke to a melodic tone had fewer attention lapses and fewer false starts on an attention test; a rhythm-only tone made no difference [2]. Promising, but the samples are small.

What we measured in our own tones

  • Morning AI has 20+ melodic alarm tones informed by sleep research.
  • Most of the melodic tones run at about 105 BPM — the tempo of the test sounds in [2]. The study kept that tempo fixed, so the tempo itself was not tested.
  • Alarm sound files are at most 29 seconds long, under Apple's 30-second limit for notification sounds [4].
  • In the in-app player the alarm rises over three minutes. That is a comfort choice: we found no study comparing a gradual alarm with an abrupt one.

What we don't claim

We don't call our sounds “scientifically proven” or “science-backed”. The studies above are small and suggestive; we use them as a reason to prefer melodic tones, not as proof.

References

  1. [1]McFarlane SJ, Garcia JE, Verhagen DS, Dyer AG (2020). Alarm tones, music and their elements: Analysis of reported waking sounds to counteract sleep inertia. PLOS ONE 15(1): e0215788. doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0215788
  2. [2]McFarlane SJ, Garcia JE, Verhagen DS, Dyer AG (2020). Auditory countermeasures for sleep inertia: Exploring the effect of melody and rhythm in an ecological context. Clocks & Sleep 2(2): 208–224. doi.org/10.3390/clockssleep2020017
  3. [3]Hilditch CJ, McHill AW (2019). Sleep inertia: current insights. Nature and Science of Sleep 11: 155–165. doi.org/10.2147/NSS.S188911
  4. [4]Apple Developer Documentation, UNNotificationSound (sound files must be shorter than 30 s). developer.apple.com/documentation/usernotifications/unnotificationsound

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