Wake Up Light

Create an artificial sunrise light alarm with the Wake Up Light app for iPhone and iPad. Connect your HomeKit enabled lights, wake up more naturally and enjoy brighter mornings.

A light alarm for natural mornings

Create an artificial dawn with Wake Up Light, so getting up in the morning feels easier and more natural. Built for use with HomeKit enabled lights, now it’s easy to add a wake-up light alarm to the Apple Home app. Wake Up Light is available for iPhone, iPad, and macOS.

With Wake Up Light you create your personal wake-up light with a touch of your finger. Set a light alarm that brightens your bedroom slowly before your desired wake-up time. Let the light get you into lighter sleep before your alarm wakes you up or awake more naturally. This leads to waking up by yourself more easily without any additional alarm clock.

Get up more natural by using a smart wake-up light build on top of HomeKit.

Wake Up Light is a light alarm app for iPhone, iPad, and macOS using the smart home automation system HomeKit from Apple. Wake Up Light creates and manages all smart automations for you. This way, the app creates wake-up lights that artificially simulate a dawn.

App for iOS and iPadOS

Overview screen of Wake Up Light with multiple alarms configured

Wake Up Light allows you to manage multiple wake-up lights, with different weekly schedules, times, settings and lights. Preview your wake-up lights so you know how they look and how bright they will be at which time.

The app comes in a light and a dark mode, suiting your style. The native look and feel of the app makes creating and adjusting your personal light alarm easy.

Want to wake up with the sun? Or rather fall asleep with a beautiful sunset? Wake-up light controls the color and brightness of your lights over time. Create several alarms accompanying your daily routine. Wake up more naturally with a sunrise or get sleepy by removing blue blight from your surroundings.

The app allows you to choose from multiple color gradients like warm and cold sunrises, sunset or your own custom gradients.

Color gradients including sunrise, sunset and custom gradients
Brightness gradients including increasing and decreasing brightness and custom gradients

With Wake-up Light you can choose to let your lights brighten over time to wake you up or dim out to create an artificial sunset.

Customize the brightness gradient to your liking with the option of a custom gradient. Set the start and target brightness between 0% and 100% and your lights will follow your settings.

Your lights will reach your desired brightness step by step and change the colors of your lights accordingly.

Your wake-up style

Wake Up Light lets you easily create wake-up lights that fit your needs. Select your light and preferred wake-up time and Wake Up Light will turn your lights on gradually over time. Wake Up Light creates the right HomeKit automations for you automatically.

A dawn simulation light increases its brightness right before you want to wake up

Adjust the duration of the brightening phase from 10 to 90 minutes (between 30 and 60 minutes is recommended) and set the brightness, your lights will reach. Then, HomeKit brightens your lights to the maximum intensity by the time you’ve set. The light color shifts from a dim warm red to a bright and cold white while increasing the brightness. The brighter the light, the better the effect will be on your body. The goal is to put you into lighter sleep, so that you awake easier.

Add multiple wake-up lights as a weekly schedule. Control different lights with their own custom time, duration and brightness. Everyone in the same house can control the wake-up lights, too – thanks to HomeKit.

Note: A HomeKit Home Hub is required for Wake Up Light to be able to schedule wake-up alarms.

For more Information, see Help.

Lates news about Wake Up Light

  • Version 4.7 – The perfect gradient curve
    Do you struggle with waking up in the morning feeling rested and energized? If so, then you need Wake Up Light 4.7.0, the latest version of the ultimate wake-up light app for iOS. With this update, you can experience even more personalized light control, so you can wake up feeling refreshed and ready to tackle […]

How do wake-up lights work?

If you’re not a morning person, waking up to an unwelcome loud sound of a conventional alarm clock can leave you feeling groggy for the whole morning ahead. That’s why researchers analyse the effect of the dawn on the human body. A scientific paper from 2010 reveals:

The authors tested whether the use of an alarm clock with artificial dawn could reduce complaints of sleep inertia in people having difficulties in waking up early. […] The use of the artificial dawn resulted in a significant reduction of sleep inertia complaints.

EFFECTS OF ARTIFICIAL DAWN ON SUBJECTIVE RATINGS OF SLEEP INERTIA AND DIM LIGHT MELATONIN ONSET (2010), GIMENEZ, MARINA CECILIA ET AL.
Dimming the bedroom confuses your body, as the natural sun light is blocked.

A dawn simulator alarm can save your day. A wake-up light alarm clock brings you slowly in shallower states of sleep by gradually increasing the brightness in your room. The light travels through your closed eye lids, notifying your body the same way as a natural sunrise. This gradual transition from deeper to shallower states of sleep has been found to wake you more naturally and boost your mood, energy and productivity for the whole day through.

There are many studies showing, what effect such a light can have on the body. In 2013 researchers found the following:

Our data indicate that exposure to an artificial morning dawn simulation light improves subjective well-being, mood, and cognitive performance […] with minimal impact on circadian phase. Thus, Dawn-simulating Lights may provide an effective strategy for enhancing cognitive performance, well-being, and mood under mild sleep restriction.

EFFECTS OF ARTIFICIAL DAWN AND MORNING BLUE LIGHT ON DAYTIME COGNITIVE PERFORMANCE, WELL-BEING, CORTISOL AND MELATONIN LEVELS (2013), VIRGINIE GABEL ET AL.

This is in line with earlier studies. A study from 1999 analyzed bright light exposure by wearing sleep masks with bright LEDs (500 lux). That study showed:

Bright light exposure […] [is] an effective treatment for circadian rhythm sleep disorders.

LIGHT MASK 500 LUX TREATMENT FOR DELAYED SLEEP PHASE SYNDROME (1999) ANDO, KATSUHISA, ET AL.

Free and premium

With our basic and free plan, you can use all the features of our wake-up light and start your day off on the right foot. And with our premium plan, you can take your wake-up experience to the next level.