Yeah that's true. There are a lot of low quality alarm clocks out there. I have been personally using the android version for a few months now and it works pretty well for me. I haven't used the ios version as much so it's possible it could be a little buggier, but it's mostly bug free. Jolt is worth a spin, you might like it.
Sure there are plenty of apps that can do that for you. But, I think that this has "better" music. Plus I can personally guarantee there won't be too much swearing. Most of the songs don't have too many lyrics.
It's actually a new hand-picked song every 24 hours. If you're curious, on how exactly it works. I have a rails server which I host all of my songs, which updates once a day. Then I pull in the song data from the server into the ios and android apps. So everyone who has the app listens to the same song.
Now I can reply to this question. I guess we can't have too many nested replys.
I actually haven't tested having the alarm go off with an external speaker like that. But, when I'm using headphones it will actually play on both the headphones and the phone's speaker. But when I pair my phone through the Amazon Echo Dot that I have, the alarm plays on the dot and not on the phone. I'm actually not entirely sure why that happens, but I think that has to do with how android manages audio. But anyways it should be fine, but your mileage may vary.
That's a good suggestion. Right now it actually does cache the song when it's on wiFi, so it often works correctly. But, I find when my phone gets low on memory, the cache is sometimes cleared, and if I'm not in WiFi, it will go back to the default ringtone.
Actually automatically enabling wiFi is a good idea. I just assumed most people would try to be in wiFi as much as they could be, so I assumed the user would do their best to make that happen. Maybe I shouldn't have assumed that.
It's my pleasure. That's true. But it's "only" 365 songs a year. I have no issues curating the content as long as people are using and enjoying the app. You have a good point, I need to write a better description of the features of the app. Luckily, a lot of artists are really excited to have the opportunity to get featured, so it's been relatively easy to find new music to play.
That's a good point, I think a lot of people feel the same way. One option as a "workaround" for now until I have time to build something out, would be to use your current phone's default alarm and then use jolt on top of it. For example if you woke up at 7AM. You could set your normal alarm at 7AM and then Jolt at 7:01AM. Now you just doubled your chance of getting up and you have some cool music to listen to too.
It's like the alarm clock version of ChatRoulette. I like it haha. That's actually a pretty cool idea, it's different enough that it could be a completely separate app.
Yeah I heard about that. I tried the Next Radio App, but it said it wasn't supported on my device. Waking up to the radio is a good solution too. But hopefully you'll like the music on jolt enough to keep coming back.
Haha that song would not be good for an alarm clock. It's interesting, I actually allowed people to choose a song for a backup ringtone before, but I ended up taking out the feature. Everyone I showed it to found it kinda confusing. So now I just use the first default ringtone in the phone.
Yeah unfortunately, if the iOS app is in silent mode, the alarm won't sound. (As far as I know silent mode is the orange toggle switch on the side of the phone). That's just an apple thing. But, as long as you're not in silent mode the song will play in the background. The iOS version isn't quite as good as the android version in my opinion because of the apple restrictions, but they're fairly close.
I don't. I just pick the songs I like from what the artists submit. Or I reach out to the artist directly to get their permission to feature it. Hopefully, you'll like them too. Everyone listens to the same song for a 24 hour period. Most of the music is EDM.
If you're online, in wifi, it will play the song. But if you're offline it will play your phone's default ringtone. I did it that way so it wouldn't eat your data. Because downloading a new song everyday can add up if you have a limited data plan. So in theory you could be offline indefinitely and the alarm should just work. And then when you come back online, you'll be able to hear the song again.
My goal is to hopefully cut down on that number. I hope you'll like all the songs. But if you don't like it you can always try tomorrow. That's the fun :)
You can set as many alarms as you need to wake up in the morning. It works just like any other alarm clock with regards to snoozing. You can snooze it as many times as you want. You can have repeat alarms. I made it so you can edit the snooze duration as well. I've been using it as my main alarm for awhile now and I haven't run into any issues yet.
Hi trebor. Thanks for the really helpful feedback. I created a link to the website to go to IOS and android. I never really thought about having much of a description. I will try to add one in the future. This is a good point.
Regarding the configurable fade-in, the good thing about a lot of the songs that play on Jolt is that they are a lot more pleasant to wake up to than most ringtones.
For the privacy policy it was required for android so most of it is boilerplate. There is no login accounts. But I will update it soon.
Thanks for the feedback on the logo. That's just embarrasing. I will fix that soon.
That's embarrasing. I just switched over from wordpress to Jekyll because I was worried about getting too much traffic from HN. I think I didn't work out all the kinks. Edit. It should be fixed now.
Hey guys I created Jolt Alarm because I was sick of waking up to the same song every day. This is a cool new way to discover new music and to replace your boring ringtone. I'd love to hear what you think.