The photo alarm that only accepts the sky.

Why a photo alarm works

The hard part of waking up isn't hearing the alarm. It's the half-asleep moment where you reach over, stop it and roll back. A photo alarm puts distance between you and that moment: you have to stand up, walk somewhere and aim a camera. By the time you've done that, you're awake enough to stay up.

Many photo alarms let you register any object, such as the bathroom sink or the coffee machine. That works, but it means the photo is only a hurdle. Skyshot makes the photo itself useful.

Why the sky

Pointing your camera at the sky means you're at a window or outside, which means daylight is reaching your eyes in the first minutes of the day. Morning light is one of the main signals your body clock uses. The alarm gets you up, and the mission gets you into the light at the same time.

And unlike a sink, the sky is different every morning. Every photo you take becomes a tile in your Sky Collage, so after a month you have something worth looking at.

What the camera actually checks

Skyshot uses the live camera, not your photo library. While you hold the phone up, three checks run on-device:

• Is this sky? (Apple Vision classification, on your iPhone)
• Is it bright enough to be daylight? (the camera's real exposure, not just pixel colours)
• Is the phone pointing up?

Honest limits

No camera check is perfect. A bright photo of the sky on a large screen can sometimes pass, although screens are usually much dimmer than daylight and often fail the light check on Normal or Strict difficulty. If someone is determined to cheat, they can. Skyshot is designed for people who want to get up, and walking to another screen at 6:30 already does most of the work.

If you stop the alarm without finishing, backup alarms ring at +2, +4 and +6 minutes. Showing the sky cancels them.