QuickAdvice: The Nap Fairy

Nap time is a very important part of my life. I love naps, but never sleep for more than 30 minutes at a time. I set my iPhone’s alarm clock to wake me up using the harp ringtone. I can turn off the ringer to avoid unwanted calls or texts during my nap and the alarm will still sound. It works just fine. Nap Fairy accomplishes the same goal with a few missing features and some added ones.

The Nap Fairy makes you set your nap in five-minute intervals (up to 15 hours) so you can’t take a 13 minute nap, which isn’t a big deal, but worth noting. It also only gives one snooze button option of 20 minutes. As I mentioned above, I take 30-minute naps, so adding 20 minutes to it is just silly. The app is structured so that it has to be running the entire time you are napping, no multitasking. You can’t close the app and you can’t silence your ringer. Additionally, your screen remains on the entire time, wasting battery life.

The Nap Fairy does let you play songs from your iTunes library to help you fall asleep and wake you up. This feature is the one that makes it slightly better than using your built-in alarm clock. The iPhone only allows you to choose from preset ringtones and it doesn’t play music. With Nap Fairy, you can fall asleep to Nick Drake and wake up to Motorhead. If you don’t have a song to wake up to, or don’t feel like choosing one, the app has a default chime that will do the job just fine.

Overall, this app is really not worth the money when you think about how easy it is to just use you iPhone’s alarm clock, but for those looking for a dedicated napping app, it serves its purpose well.

If you’d like to start taking naps more often, but don’t have an app for it, leave a comment below. I’ve got three copies to give away. The contest will end on June 9, at 8:00 a.m. CST.