I forget the name of it, but back before I got old and started waking up consistently before the alarm went off, I had an alarm clock app that made you do math problems in order to shut it off or snooze it. They got progressively harder with each snooze, so you eventually had to actually wake up.

Can’t get you out of bed, but it can definitely force your brain to kick into gear which usually kept me from falling back asleep.

My hack was to get older and have a couple of kids that wear you out, fall asleep on the couch around 9:30 and get up daily around 5:30am without an alarm because your body says you slept enough.

All jokes aside, start sticking to a consistent sleep schedule and your body will wake itself up, no phones or alarms required.

I use an app called AMDroid, it makes me do math in my head before I can shut it off. Works every time.

Check your settings to see if the alarm isn’t giving up after a set amount of time, had this happen to me. Try changing the ringtone to a song you hate and putting it the furthest away you can inside your room so you have to get up.

Well, it mostly depends on why you’re missing them.

Believe it or not, sometimes there’s nothing you can do. Some people will sleep through any noises at all, though it’s really unusual.

Most likely, your brain is telling you that you aren’t sleeping enough by refusing to react to the stimulus.

So you gotta fix what’s wrong. If you’re staying up late, begin rest earlier, even if you don’t sleep earlier (which can be the case for some types of insomnia). Just being in dark/low light with as little external stimulus as possible can help your brain and body “recharge” a little even when you don’t sleep enough. That’s a short term fix, you’ll eventually need to figure out what to do to address the insomnia directly.

If you’re not staying asleep it’s harder to address without outside help. Tbh, it isn’t usually something that you can crowd source an answer for just because there’s too many possibilities. A sleep study tends to end up being the real answer. But you can try various meditative methods when you wake up to help drop back out faster, if you’re waking up enough to do so.

The major problem comes in when you can’t tell you’re waking up, or are just sleeping so poorly that it amounts to the same thing. Apnea is a bitch like that, so you’d want to rule it out one way or another.

All of that being said, you can also try vibration based alarms, like the kind that go under the mattress or pillow. There’s also wrist and headband based ones. Sometimes, especially if your brain is just inviting the alarms because it’s pissy about ignoring sounds, tactile stimulation gets the job done because our brains process it differently, and it’s harder to filter out past a point.

I would try getting more and better sleep as the primary fix though. Get to bed earlier, make sure you minimize light and noise, and learn some techniques like progressive relaxation and deep, controlled breathing. If you need background sound, err on the side of “white noise” over music, but music will do in a pinch as long as it’s on a timer so it doesn’t interfere with the sound of the alarm later.

Make sure you aren’t snoring heavy, and if you are, address that. The problem is that it often takes a ton of experimentation to figure out what actually helps you. Snoring isn’t the same as apnea, necessarily, but it does disturb your sleep sometimes.

Avoid stimulants at least 4 hours before bed. No caffeine, no tobacco, no meth (the last is mostly a joke, but check that any prescription meds or OTC meds aren’t stimulants).

And, obviously, if you can, talk to your doctor about a sleep study.

Although the app’s designer went and somewhat enshitified things by placing a few features under a subscription, my app for waking up is the best app I’ve ever come across.

Its called Alarmy and the free version is more than enough to make anyone wake up if they really need to.

Drink a full glass of water before bed, eventually you’ll learn how much to drink to wake you at about the correct time. I used to be absolutely dead to the world while sleeping, I even needed a shock bracelet to wake me. Drinking water was one method I used though.

There is an app called Sleep As Android that I used to use. You put your phone on your bed next to you and it tries to determine what level of sleep you’re in. You tell it when you’d like to get up and if it detects that you’re in a lighter stage of sleep within a certain amount of time before that, it triggers the alarm. You’re then more likely to hear it, and more likely to feel rested, than if it went off like, twenty minutes later.

Also played nice with WearOS watches.

I had the same problem, and the solution that worked best for me was to buy a vibrating alarm clock for the hearing impared.

I put it under the mattress topper so there is no way I can ignore or snooze it without getting out of bed.

I have an alarm clock with two alarms on it. The first is radio, at a reasonable volume. The second is beep Beep BEEP with ascending volume. If the first doesn’t wake me the second will. Unless I press the off button and fall back to sleep.

I’m amazed the clock with the bell doesn’t wake you (if you mean one of the traditional alarm clocks with the bells on?). Those things are LOUD.

As sound isn’t working, maybe try one of those “silent alarms” which just turns a light on to help you wake up naturally (I haven’t tried these and would definitely have a beeping alarm as a backup!), or something like a Fitbit which can wake you up by buzzing on your wrist (and will adjust when it wakes you to match your sleep cycle)

2 alarms, one on the iPad, one on the phone. Full volume, spaced 10 minutes apart.

Edit: these go off almost 2 hours before I have to leave, and I’m asleep 7-8 hours before they go off. My biggest difficulty in waking up on time is not going to bed with enough time to fall asleep for 8 hours.

I have a hard-stop alarm, set 9 hours before I have to wake up, to remind myself to get ready for bed. A full sleep cycle (including morning routine) is an 11-hour time investment for me.

Get some smart bulbs and set them to a timer. The lights coming on helps wake you up naturally since your body thinks the sun is coming up.

Turn the volume up on your alarms, and pick an annoying ring tone helps a lot. As well setting the phone away from the bed if you’re able to.

I use a smart alarm app. It uses your mic to track your breathing, and uses that information to identify when you’re in deeper and lighter phases of sleep. You set a range of time for the alarm, and when it detects you coming out of a deep cycle it starts the alarm. I’ve always slept through alarms, and this works like a dream.

Does this occur even after a few nights of proper sleep?

If you generally sleep enough and don’t have other sleeping problems you could try to change the ringtone. Or if you are like me and turn off the alarm half a sleep and don’t remember it, put your alarms further away from your bed.