Wake up to your favorite tunes with Music Alarm

By George Ponder
last updated

Music Alarm is a Windows Phone app that, as the name suggests, allows you to wake up to your Windows Phone music library. The application is fairly simple and straight forward in that you choose the music you want to wake up to, set the alarm time and tap the check mark to set things in motion.

You do have the option to shuffle the music and set the duration of the snooze button. Speaking of which, Music Alarm has a nifty "shake to snooze" feature. You just need to make sure you have a firm grip on your Windows Phone so it doesn't sail across the bedroom.

Additional settings on Music Alarm allow the app to run under the lock screen, prevent the phone from locking and . When you prevent the phone from locking, Music Alarm basically turns your Windows Phone into a bedside alarm clock. Music Alarm will let you dim the display within the app by dragging up or down on the main clock page.

Music Alarm is a nice, clean looking alarm clock app for your Windows Phone but there is one catch. You have to leave the app running for it to work. As I understand it, it's an issue that prevents the app from having access to your music library when the app is running in the background. Another bug is that if you exit the app with the alarm set, when you relaunch the app the alarm is turned off.

Music Alarm has potential and the bugs deal more with the OS than the app's programming. If these kinks can be ironed out Music Alarm will be a very nice app for those who prefer to be awoken by music than a tingy alarm sound. As is, you'll just need to be careful and have Music Alarm up and running with your Windows Phone on the charger before you go to sleep.

Music Alarm is a free, ad-supported app that you can find here (opens in new tab) at the Windows Phone Store.

QR: Music Alarm

George Ponder
George Ponder

George is the Reviews Editor at Windows Central, concentrating on Windows 10 PC and Mobile apps. He's been a supporter of the platform since the days of Windows CE and uses his current Windows 10 Mobile phone daily to keep up with life and enjoy a game during down time.

33 Comments
  • Sounds like a perfect fit for one of nokias wireless chargers.
  • Ha ha funny sail across the room! :-)
  • LOL I can see how that can happen
  • By the way I can still see the black tile
  • I can see a lot of people complaining their alarms didn't go off cause it wasn't running in background then...
  • Or the fact that you can't transfer your music from Zune to 920 because 920 doesn't recognize Zune recorded MUSIC. Boooooooo.
  • What's that now?  
  • Oooh...I wonder if this would work with the JBL PowerUp speakers? I'd love to ditch my old iPod Touch + iHome alarm setup.
  • Why isn't this built in though... -.-
  • Having to run in the foreground is a limitation of the API.  I also have an alarm clock app in the store, AlarmZZZ, and it has the same limitation (which people complain about, but if I would change it I could).  Basically there is a built-in Alarm class but it is very limiting - you don't really have control over what it displays (only some text) and it can't play music from the media library.  I'm not sure what this author does but I use a Timer to count down to when the alarm goes off, and Timers are halted when the app goes into the background.
  • Seriously, Is this such a good idea anyway. I tried waking to music twenty years ago when clock radios first came out. I would just incorporate the music into my dream and over sleep every time.
  • Lol yes, you need annoying sounds for an alarm clock, not something you like listening to. Still nice to have the option.
  • I don't like having songs i like as my alarm. I end up hating it after a while lol
  • You can kill two birds with one stone (annoying sounds *and* a song you like) if you're a Pink Floyd fan: use their song "Time" lol you'll spring out of bed within the first ten seconds. And if the volume is loud enough, you'll have heart palpitations until your second cup of coffee.
     
    Techiedude
  • Lol!
  • That's if only my 920 would recognize all the music I burned onto my PC through Zune. That's an epic and tragic fail.
  • Its called drag and drop, zune sucks anyway.
  • Yeah, I know that, it doesn't work because all my music was burned onto zune, and music I bought was from iTunes. And because these are mp4, wp8 doesn't support it. Now you know something new.
  • Well I guess its to each their own because I loved Zune and would give $100 bill to have it for W8 & WP8 instead of the crappy limited xBox music BS that I have to deal with. Drag and drop is great but Zune was much more straightforward & easier in keeping your music and podcasts synced. Never really understood the Zune haters other than it couldn't sync like winmo.....
  • Yeah, tjhat's what I don't understand. Zune was UBER easy to use. the sync was such a simple setup. I supose that if you just plug and play and don't take the time to look around and find it's features, then you end up being a whinning about how much you hate zune.
  • I don't mind Zune at all.
  • Why not just use the built in alarm clock? I'd trust that one alot more. Besides an actual alarm sound works better. I downloaded the "Nuke Alarm" as a ringtone and the alarm app that's in WP8 can use that. That wakes me up everytime.
  • True, you can just set a ringtone that's a song as your alarm and still wake up to music and not need to worry about the alarm not going off because it isn't running or something else. That's how I wake up every morning to some nice progressive house music, fist pumping and all :-D...
  • Bryan Adams rule :-D
  • You don't even need an app for a music alarm. Just add your MP3 to the ringtones folder and then you can choose it when setting up an alarm. That's what I did.
  • Would be great if it was that easy for WP7.x users.... *wp8 envy*
  • go into zune and either the music on your phone or something in your collection that syncs with it. Right click and change genre to ringtone. It's actually pretty easy. Only downside is it should be natively supported on the phone. 
  • Doesn't the song have to be less than 1mb and less than 40 seconds for WP to recognize it as a Ringtone? I tried just setting it to that genre but that didn't seem to work.
  • I had this app and it made my phone run hot...hope they fixed it
  • This is not a problem we have encountered. Which phone do you have?
  • Thanks for the write up George!
    A few days ago we actually released an update which fixes several bugs and gives the app a bit of a make over as well as a more intuative user experience.
    We also released a paid version of the app which removes the ads, the trial is fully functional with no expiry but retains the ads. The paid version costs $0.99 and can be found here: http://www.windowsphone.com/s?appid=f6e26077-cb6a-4e19-a14c-486627529935
  • Why would you ruin your favorite songs by setting it as an alarm? You'll learn to hate the song thats set as the alarm, bad idea haha
  • Absolute worst app I've ever downloaded from the Windows Market. Whether its the app or the OS that are causing all these bugs doesn't matter. What matter's is that Handiware has put out a terrible product for a utility that has high importance, an alarm clock. 
    I won't go into details on incredibly large ball dropped when it comes to this app. I've already done it in the rates from the Marketplace. I just don't want anyone else to go through the same frustrations that I did.