How it works
A wake-up call, the way a good hotel does it.
You choose a time and a place. Call Me Awake calls your phone, in a calm voice, and keeps calling until you say you're awake.
Set it up once
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1. Add your number
We text a code to prove the number is yours. We never call a number before it is verified.
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2. Save our number
Save the contact card and allow it through Silent, Sleep Focus and Do Not Disturb. It takes two minutes. Here is exactly what to tap.
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3. Press 1 on a test call
We call you straight away. If your phone rings and you press 1, you know the real one will. If not, we show you what to change.
Then set a call: a time, a place, and whether it repeats. The place is the part most alarms forget.
The call
The voice is automated and says so in its first sentence. It tells you the time and the place, in words, so there is no guessing which zone it means.
- Press 1: you're awake. The call is done, and the backup alarm in the app, if you use it, is cancelled.
- Press 2: call me back in 9 minutes. By default you can do this up to three times; you can change both numbers in Settings.
- Press 9: stop all calls. Every call on your account stops until you turn them back on.
No sales pitch, ever. We don't record calls, and we don't upsell in them.
Incoming call
Call Me Awake
- “Good morning, Kyle. This is Call Me Awake, your automated wake-up call.”
- “It is six thirty, Tokyo time.”
- “Press 1 if you're awake. Press 2 for a call back in 9 minutes. Press 9 to stop all calls.”
If you don't pick up
By default we call again 2, 5 and 8 minutes later. The second call comes soon enough that an iPhone's "Allow Repeated Calls" rings it even when a Focus would have silenced the first. Retries and snoozes are free.
- 6:30 AM Tokyo time: the first call.
- +2 minutes: second call.
- +5 minutes: third call.
- +8 minutes: fourth call.
- A few minutes later: a text message from us, a notification, and the backup alarm in the app.
These are the defaults. You can change the number of retries and the gaps in Settings.
The backup alarm
Phone networks fail, and so do phones on airplane mode. If you use the app, it also sets a local alarm a few minutes after the last retry. When you press 1, we tell the app to cancel it.
One honest limit: on an iPhone, if the app can't run before the alarm time, the alarm may still ring after you confirmed. We'd rather wake you twice than not at all.
When you travel
A call belongs to a place, not to your phone's current setting. When your phone lands somewhere new, the app asks: "Move your 6:30 Los Angeles call to 6:30 Tokyo?" You decide. We never move a call on our own.
On the night clocks change, a wake time that does not exist, like 2:30 AM Los Angeles time in March, rings when the gap ends, never later. A time that happens twice rings at the first one.
Can I get a wake-up call?
Yes. The first ones are on us.