Unbed

Getting up shouldn't take willpower.

Leave your toothpaste in the bathroom. Unbed rings until you walk over and scan it. By the time the noise stops, you're already standing — no decision required, and nothing to negotiate with at 7am.

Coming to the App Store iPhone · iOS 26.1 or later

Three steps, once

You set this up once, on a normal afternoon when getting up isn't the problem yet.

  1. Pick your time

    Choose when and which days. Weekends stay yours unless you say otherwise.

  2. Register something far away

    Scan the barcode on your shampoo, your cereal, your coffee. Anything that lives in another room.

  3. Put the phone down

    In the morning the alarm rings, and it keeps coming back until that barcode is scanned.

Why a barcode and not a puzzle

Math problems and memory games wake your mind while your body stays horizontal, and a mind that's awake at 7am is very good at arguing for five more minutes. A barcode across the room can't be solved from bed. There's nothing to be clever about — you either walk, or it keeps ringing.

Unbed does have a shake and a maths mission for people easing into it. It just doesn't pretend they're the same thing, and it tells you which ones actually get you vertical.

What it does, and what it can't

Most apps in this category promise an alarm you can't escape. iPhones don't work that way, and you'd find out the first morning. Here's the real shape of it.

What it does

  • Rings through Silent Mode and Focus. Apple's alarm system permits this, and Unbed uses it.
  • Books the whole morning in advance. Dismissing one alarm doesn't cancel the ones behind it.
  • Only a finished task ends it. Scan the code and the rest of the run disappears at once.
  • Locks itself before bed. You can't quietly disarm it an hour before it matters.

What it can't

  • It can't stop you deleting it. No app can. If you want out at 7am, you can get out.
  • It can't override your volume. The system's ringer slider sets how loud alarms are, and apps aren't allowed near it.
  • It can't draw its own alarm screen. iOS shows that, not us. Your task appears once you tap through.

No streaks to protect

Unbed counts the mornings you got up, and that number only ever goes up. Miss a day and nothing scolds you, nothing resets to zero, no screen tells you that you broke anything. Days you didn't set an alarm for don't count against you, and there are freezes for the weeks when you're ill or away.

This is a tool for people who find mornings genuinely hard. Guilt has already been tried.

Free to keep using

One alarm and one barcode stay free forever — enough to actually get up every morning without paying anything. The subscription adds unlimited alarms and codes, every mission type, the anti-cheat checks, and the wider statistics. There's a full free month first, and no paywall standing between you and finding out whether it works.