Help & Support

The big picture

Most alarm apps give you a list of alarms to manage. WakePlan works differently.

WakePlan manages one system alarm on your iPhone. Every night it figures out what time you should wake up tomorrow, sets that single alarm, and tells you why — so you never have to remember to adjust it yourself.

You don't pick a wake time every evening. You teach WakePlan about your life — where you wake up, what your weeks look like, what's on your calendar — and it keeps the plan updated as things change.

Think of WakePlan as a wake-up planner, not an alarm clock. The alarm is just the output. The planning is the product.

Core concepts

Four building blocks work together. Most people start with just contexts; add rules and week plans when your schedule gets more complex.

Foundation

Contexts

A context is a named life situation with a default wake time — like Home, Office, or Partner's place. Each context can also have an alarm sound and snooze preference.

In the app: Settings → Contexts

Recurring weeks

Week plans

A week plan is a named weekly template. For each day Monday–Sunday you assign a context — for example, Office on weekdays and Home on weekends. You can create several week plans (like "Kids week" and "Kid-free week") and switch between them.

In the app: Settings → Week plan

Calendar signals

Rules

A rule watches your calendar and says: when this event happens, use this context (or switch to a week plan). For example, "if an event title contains Office, wake me as Office" or "on Mondays, activate my Weekday week plan."

In the app: Settings → Rules

One-off changes

Overrides

An override is a manual change for a specific day. Plans change — you're up late, you have an early flight. Tap tomorrow on the Home screen to set a different wake time. Overrides always win over everything else.

In the app: Home → tap tomorrow's plan

How WakePlan picks tomorrow

When WakePlan plans your next morning, it checks signals in this order. The first match wins — and the Home screen always shows you which one was used and why.

Manual override You changed tomorrow yourself on the Home screen.
Calendar rule match An event on a calendar you monitor matched one of your rules.
Active week plan The currently active week plan assigns a context to tomorrow's weekday.
Weekday or weekend default A context you marked as the default for weekdays or weekends.
Fallback context Your first context, if nothing else applies.

Rules and week plans work together. If both would apply on the same day, the calendar rule wins — and WakePlan's reason line will say so. Week plans handle your normal rhythm; rules handle exceptions that show up on your calendar.

Common setups

Step-by-step guides for schedules people often set up in WakePlan.

Two homes, simple schedule

You mostly wake up at home, but stay at a partner's place on weekends.

Create two contexts: Home (e.g. 6:30) and Partner's (e.g. 8:00).
Open Home and mark it as your weekday default.
Open Partner's and mark it as your weekend default.
Done — WakePlan alternates automatically. Check Home to see tomorrow's plan and reason.

Two alternating weeks (custody, shift patterns)

Your schedule repeats every two weeks — different wake times depending on which week you're in.

Create the contexts you need — e.g. Early week and Late week, each with its own wake time.
Go to Settings → Week plan and create two week plans: Week A (assign contexts to each day) and Week B (your other pattern).
Activate Week A when that week starts. When the next cycle begins, switch to Week B.
Optional automation: add a rule that activates the right week plan — e.g. "every Monday, activate Week A" and another rule for the alternate Monday. Rules can switch week plans without changing contexts directly.

Hybrid work (home vs office)

You work from home some days and go to the office on others, and your calendar already knows which.

Create Home office and Commute contexts with different wake times.
Connect your calendar in Settings (Apple calendars and/or Google Calendar).
Add rules like: "if event title contains Office → Commute context" and "if event title contains WFH → Home office context."
Set a weekday default as a fallback for days with no matching events.

One-off late night

Tonight you're up late but your normal rules would still wake you early.

Open Home and tap tomorrow's wake time.
Set the time you actually want — that's an override.
WakePlan updates your system alarm immediately and shows "Manual override" as the reason. Your rules and week plan resume the day after.

Meeting-driven mornings

Your first meeting sets how early you need to be up.

Create a context with the wake time you want on meeting days (e.g. a Meeting day context).
Add a rule that matches when your first event starts before a certain time, or matches events on a specific work calendar.
WakePlan picks the context when a match is found and uses its configured wake time; otherwise your week plan or weekday default applies.

Reading the Home screen

Everything WakePlan decided is visible at a glance — that's intentional. You should always be able to trust tomorrow's alarm without digging through settings.

Tomorrow's wake time

The time your system alarm is set for. Tap it to override.

Context name

Which life situation WakePlan chose — e.g. Office or Home.

Reason line

A short explanation: "Week plan · Office", "Calendar rule match", "Manual override", and so on. If a rule beat a week plan, the reason says that too.

Confidence

How sure WakePlan is about the plan. High confidence means everything lined up cleanly. Lower confidence might mean a calendar conflict or stale data — worth a quick look before bed.