A sunlight alarm clock that needs real sunlight.

Wake-up lights and sunlight alarms are not the same thing

A wake-up light (often sold as a "sunrise alarm clock") is a lamp that ramps up from dim red to bright white over 20 to 40 minutes. It can make waking feel gentler, and many people like them. But the light is a lamp, usually far dimmer than daylight, and once it's on there is nothing that gets you out of bed.

Skyshot is built the other way around. It doesn't try to imitate the sun inside your bedroom. It sends you to the sun. The alarm rings like a normal iPhone alarm, and the way to finish it is to walk to a window or step outside and point your camera at the sky.

How Skyshot's sunlight check works

When the alarm rings you tap Show the sky. The camera opens and three checks run on your iPhone, in real time:

• Sky: Apple's on-device Vision framework looks for sky in the frame (clear, cloudy, sunrise, overcast all count).
• Light: the camera's exposure tells Skyshot how bright the scene really is, so a dim room doesn't pass.
• Up: your phone has to point upward, the way you'd look at the sky.

Before sunrise, in winter, on grey days

If your alarm rings before the sun is up, Skyshot switches to window mode and relaxes the light check: a window toward the sky is enough. Clouds and rain count as sky. If the check still can't see anything after three tries, you can count the day anyway, so a dark January morning never locks you out of your own phone.

When you pass, the screen floods with a sunrise, your streak grows, and today's sky is saved to your Sky Collage. Any backup alarms that were waiting are cancelled.

Why the light should come from outside

Even an overcast sky is many times brighter than a typical room, and researchers generally recommend getting outdoor light early in the day. A minute at the window won't fix everything, and Skyshot isn't a medical device, but it is an easy, repeatable way to make daylight the first thing you see. We go into the research on the morning sunlight page.