Best Clock App for Android: Alarms, Widgets and Bedside

People install a clock app for different jobs: an alarm that gets them out of bed, a clock on the home screen, or a clock to leave glowing on the bedside table. The Clock app that came with your phone handles the first job for most people and has an answer for the other two, so start there.

We read Google’s and Samsung’s help pages for their own Clock apps, then went through the Google Play listings of the alternatives. Two of the ten apps this article listed in 2019 have left the store.

What the Clock app on your phone already does

Google’s Clock

Clock from Google is a free install on any phone running Android 4.4 or later, according to Google’s help pages. On Google Play it has no ads label and no in-app purchases. Alarms, timers, a stopwatch and a world clock are the basics. The parts people miss are these:

• Music alarms. An alarm can play one of the phone’s sounds, your own sound file, or something from YouTube Music, Pandora, Spotify or Calm. Google says choosing a particular song on YouTube Music or Spotify needs a premium account.
• Alarm behaviour. In the Clock settings you can have the alarm grow louder gradually, change how long a snooze lasts and set the volume buttons to snooze or dismiss.
• Bedtime. The Bedtime tab sets a bedtime and a wake-up time and plays sleep sounds. Its Sunrise alarm slowly brightens the screen for 15 minutes before the alarm starts.
• Weather. Add Weather forecast to an alarm and the forecast appears when you stop it.
• A bedside clock. Tap More, then Screen saver, and the clock shows dimmed on a blank screen. Google says you can keep it on overnight, and a Night mode setting dims it for dark rooms.
• Home screen widgets. The app comes with clock widgets you can resize.

Google’s alarm help page carries two warnings. If you set two alarms too close together, the first may be cancelled, so leave five minutes between them. And if your ringtone is set to silent and vibration is off, the alarm will not go off.

Samsung’s Clock

Galaxy phones have Samsung’s own Clock, with tabs for Alarm, World clock, Stopwatch and Timer. Samsung’s support page says each alarm can have its own name, sound, vibration, snooze interval and background image. The World clock shows the weather for each city. The timer runs up to 99 hours, 59 minutes and 59 seconds, and you can save the ones you use often as presets. Its Google Play listing adds that several timers can run at once.

Clock apps compared

Alarm apps for heavy sleepers

All four of these show ads and have in-app purchases. What they offer over the stock Clock is ways to stop you switching the alarm off half asleep.

Alarm Clock for Heavy Sleepers, also called AMdroid, gives every alarm its own settings. Its dismiss challenges include maths problems, a captcha, a barcode or QR code, NFC and Wi-Fi. It knows the public holidays for your country and can skip alarms on those days. It can also limit alarms to certain places, and the listing is upfront that this means collecting location data even when the app is closed. There is a gentle pre-alarm and a Wear OS companion.

Alarmy is built around what it calls missions: photograph something you registered earlier, scan a barcode, solve maths, type out a phrase, shake the phone or do squats. A Wake Up Check restarts the missions if you ignore it. Two optional settings go further. One stops you turning the phone off while the alarm rings, and one stops the app being uninstalled. It is an app for people who do not trust themselves at 6am, and it does not pretend otherwise.

Alarm Clock Xtreme offers maths problems at five levels of difficulty, a password to retype, or a QR code you print and leave across the room. You can cap the number of snoozes and shorten each one. It also wakes you to online radio, and includes timers and a stopwatch.

Sleep as Android is a sleep tracker with an alarm attached. It follows your sleep cycle and aims to wake you at the best moment in it. The listing says it can track without the phone in the bed by using sonar, and it links to Wear OS, Galaxy and Garmin watches. You get seven days of premium, then choose between the free tier and an upgrade.

Clock widgets for the home screen

Try the widgets in Google’s Clock first, since they are free and ad-free. To add one, touch and hold an empty part of a Home screen, tap Widgets, then touch and hold a clock widget and slide it into place.

DIGI Clock Widget is for people who want more control over a plain digital clock. It comes in sizes from 2×1 up to 6×3 for tablets, and you can choose the fonts, colours, date format and background. You also decide what a tap on the widget opens.

Digital Clock & Weather Widget puts the current weather and forecast next to the time. Its paid Premium upgrade removes the ads and adds extra time zones and battery level.

KWGT is a different sort of thing. It is an editor in which you design a widget from text, shapes and live data, and its listing counts digital, analogue and world clocks among the things you can build. The Pro upgrade removes ads and lets you import presets. The same developer’s KLWP does the same job for live wallpapers.

Bedside and night clocks

Google Clock’s screen saver covers the basics. Two free apps do more.

Night Clock (Digital Clock) has no ads and nothing to buy inside it. It shows a dimmed clock whose brightness and size you set, with a torch button on the same screen. The clock drifts slowly across the display so it does not sit in one place all night. Its listing says in capitals that it is not an alarm app. A separate paid version adds custom colours and starts by itself when the phone goes on charge.

Night Clock & Digital Clock starts when you plug the phone in. It has digital and analogue faces, automatic brightness and a night mode. It also shows the battery level, the date and new notifications. The developer describes it as open source. In-app purchases unlock a flip-clock face, weather and internet radio.

Alarm Clock for Me combines a nightstand mode with alarms, a sleep timer and widgets, so it suits anyone who wants one app for both. It shows ads.

Which one to pick

• Ordinary alarms, timers and a world clock: the Clock already on your phone. If you want Google’s and do not have it, it is a free download.
• You sleep through alarms: AMdroid, for the per-alarm settings and the holiday skipping.
• You switch alarms off without waking up: Alarmy. Read what its optional settings do before turning them on.
• A clock on the home screen: Google’s widget first, then DIGI Clock Widget.
• A clock by the bed: Night Clock (Digital Clock), which has no ads.

What happened to the old list

Timely and Beautiful Widgets no longer turn up when you search Google Play. Big Digital Clock is a name shared by so many apps that we could not match it to one listing.

1Weather is still on the store and still offers clock widgets among its weather ones, but it is a weather app first, so it is not in the table. The Digital Clock Widget entry appears to be the app now listed as Digital Clock & Weather Widget. The remaining entries are still on Google Play and are covered above.

Quick answers

Which alarm clock app for Android is free without ads?

Google’s Clock. It has no ads label and no in-app purchases on Google Play, and the same is true of Samsung’s Clock.

What is the best alarm clock app for heavy sleepers?

Alarm Clock for Heavy Sleepers (AMdroid) or Alarmy. Both make you complete a task before the alarm stops, and both are free with ads.

How do I put a clock on my Android home screen?

Touch and hold an empty part of a Home screen, tap Widgets, touch and hold a clock widget, then slide it onto the screen.

How do I show seconds in the Google Clock app?

Open Clock, tap More, then Settings, and turn on Display time with seconds.

Can I use my Android phone as a bedside clock?

Yes. In Google’s Clock, tap More and then Screen saver for a dimmed clock you can leave on overnight. Night Clock (Digital Clock) is a free app made for the same job.