Properly Wake Up Based On The Weather With WakeApp Weather

WakeApp Weather ($0.99) by Smart Solutions Apps is a new approach to looking at the weather and alarms in one.

Do you run in the morning? If so, then you probably don’t want to be woken up so early if it is pouring outside, right? You’d probably want to sleep in instead, actually. Or maybe it’s snowing, and you would have to get up even earlier to prep your driveway to get to work. For those who don’t have to deal with snow or rain daily, then perhaps you want to get some extra shut eye when it’s cloudy outside, or even rise earlier if it’s going to be a beautiful day? No matter what the situation, WakeApp Weather has the solution.

The thing that drew me in to the app in the first place was the fact that it looks clean and elegant. Like most apps nowadays, the design is flat, with simple iconography to represent activities. Even though there aren’t many apps out there that do this kind of thing, WakeApp Weather is still intuitive to use, which is a bonus.

When you launch the app for the first time, you will be prompted for your position and push notifications, of course. The location is to gather the weather information for accurate alarms. A four-day forecast for the current location will be found at the bottom of the app as a ribbon. To create a new alarm, just tap on the “+” button.

When creating a new alarm, there are several steps. First, you will need to select the activity you want to set an alarm for. The app has a good amount of basic activities that you may already be considering, such as running, swimming, cycling, surfing, sunbathing, skiing, walking the dog, shopping, working, studying, and more. If what you want is not there, you can find the “Do Outdoor Activity” or “Do Another Activity” options along the strip. You can tap on the activity name to edit the text if desired.

Once you pick the activity, you will want to select the weather conditions that are ideal for it. There are five weather options to choose from: Clear, Cloudy, Drizzle, Rain, and Snow. If it’s an activity where the weather doesn’t matter, then you can select the “All” option. Then, you can select the time you want the alarm to go off, specify the location by zip code, and choose the sound. I was a bit surprised when I realized that WakeApp Weather doesn’t have any custom sounds, as they are all the standard iOS alarm sounds. It would have been nice to have different sounds or even the ability to wake up to your music library. When all of these details are filled in, tap on “Save” to add the alarm to the list on the main screen.

One thing I did notice with WakeApp Weather is the fact that it seems to take a while for the alarms to actually save. I’m not sure why this is, perhaps because of the location bit, but it took a good 20 seconds or so before it ended up saving. At first I thought that the app froze on me since it become unresponsive, so while I was tapping around I ended up accidentally changing the activity and then it got saved. It was quite a frustrating little experience, and I really hope that the developer can optimize it for speed in future updates.

When you have multiple alarms created, you can toggle the ones you need active with a switch. If you need to make changes, just swipe to the right on an alarm to reveal a contextual menu, where you can edit, share the alarm to Facebook or Twitter, or delete it.

I like the concept behind WakeApp Weather, and I’m sure that it could prove to be useful to many people. I just hope that the developer optimizes the speed and performance in a future update so that it doesn’t lag as much. Also, the app seems to only display Metric units — while this works for a lot of people, it will take some getting used to since I don’t normally use Metric (I know, I know), but rather Imperial. I would like to have the option to switch between Metric or Imperial in an update.

If you need a conditional weather alarm, then WakeApp Weather is definitely one to consider looking at. You can get it in the App Store for your iPhone for $0.99.