Best Clock App for Android, From Alarms to the Bedside

An alarm that gets you out of bed, a clock on the home screen and a clock left glowing on the bedside table are three different jobs, and the Clock app that came with your phone has an answer for each. Replace it only where that answer falls short: AMdroid if you sleep through alarms, Alarmy if you switch them off without waking up, DIGI Clock Widget for a home screen clock you can restyle, and Night Clock (Digital Clock) by the bed.

Alarms and timers in Google’s and Samsung’s Clock

Clock from Google is a free install on any phone running Android 4.4 or later, according to Google’s help pages, so you can have it even if your phone came with something else. 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 in the alarm itself. It can play one of the phone’s sounds, your own sound file, or something from YouTube Music, Pandora, Spotify or Calm, though Google says choosing a particular song on YouTube Music or Spotify needs a premium account. In the Clock settings you can have it grow louder gradually, change how long a snooze lasts and set the volume buttons to snooze or dismiss. Add Weather forecast to an alarm and the forecast appears when you stop it.

The Bedtime tab sets a bedtime and a wake-up time and plays sleep sounds, the same job as a sound machine for sleep if you would rather keep the phone out of it. Its Sunrise alarm slowly brightens the screen for 15 minutes before the alarm starts.

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.

Galaxy phones have Samsung’s own Clock, with tabs for Alarm, World clock, Stopwatch and Timer, and it too has no ads label and no in-app purchases on Google Play. 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.

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, comes from Smart Alarm Clock Team and 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, from Delightroom, 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, so read what they do before turning them on. 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 & Timer, from AVG Labs, 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, from Urbandroid, 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.

A clock on the home screen

Try the widgets in Google’s Clock first, since they are free, ad-free and resizable. 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. The app itself can also show seconds: open Clock, tap More, then Settings, and turn on Display time with seconds.

The three below show ads and have in-app purchases.

DIGI Clock Widget, from ForestTree, is for people who want more control over a plain digital clock. It comes in six 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, from Sunspot Studio, 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. 1Weather also offers clock widgets among its weather ones, but it is a weather app first, and it sits with the other weather widgets for Android.

KWGT Kustom Widget Maker, from Kustom Industries, 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.

Timely and Beautiful Widgets, two names you may remember, no longer turn up when you search Google Play.

A clock for the bedside table

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

Night Clock (Digital Clock), from Benjamin Laws, has no ads and nothing to buy inside it, so get that one. 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, from Stefan Fruhner, 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. It has no ads, and the developer describes it as open source. In-app purchases unlock a flip-clock face, weather and internet radio.

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