# Simple Alarm Clock: an AOSP alarm app stripped down on purpose > Simple Alarm Clock is a Kotlin alarm clock for Android phones and tablets, published as com.better.alarm on Google Play and F-Droid, with a gentle pre alarm, a keyboard style time picker and a one click snooze. The code is branched from AOSP and the project states it is Apache 2.0 licensed, though the last push was on 2026-06-03. **yuriykulikov/AlarmClock** — Most popular open source Android Alarm Clock App - Repository: https://github.com/yuriykulikov/AlarmClock - Stars: 623 · Forks: 191 - Language: Kotlin - License: not declared - Published: 2026-10-22 · Updated: 2026-10-22 · Language: en - Canonical page: https://hysenlabs.com/projects/yuriykulikov-alarmclock ## What Simple Alarm Clock is and what it deliberately leaves out Simple Alarm Clock is an alarm clock for Android smartphones and tablets, and the project describes it as bringing a pure alarm experience by combining a small set of features and a clean interface. The application identifier is com.better.alarm, which is how it appears on Google Play and on F-Droid. The design philosophy is stated in plain terms: the interface is designed to be simple, intuitive and efficient, and by removing what is not essential the access to everything you need becomes easier. That is the core claim, and it is unusual to see an alarm app advertise subtraction rather than addition. The features list is short enough to read in one pass, and every entry is about the moment of waking. A low volume gentle alarm starts some time before the main alarm, and the reasoning given is sleep phase rather than volume: when you are in a good sleep phase you will hear the low volume alarm and wake up more refreshed, with thirty minutes stated as usually enough to catch the fast sleep phase. The main alarm fades in in volume, and the vibration starts only after the fade in has completed. Snooze works with one click, or to a selected time through the time picker. A long click dismisses, which prevents an accidental dismiss. A long click on the snooze button gives an adjustable snooze time with a convenient time picker. And the time picker is styled like the one in Jelly Bean, meaning a phone style keyboard rather than a spinning dial. That is the whole product, and there is no mention of a second alarm, a world clock, a stopwatch, a bedtime reminder or any sleep tracking. The users are people who want an alarm and nothing else, and developers who want a readable Android alarm implementation to work from. ## The AOSP origin and what it means for the codebase The application code is branched from AOSP, which is the key structural fact about this project. AOSP is the Android Open Source Project, the upstream source for Android itself, and it carries a built-in Desk Clock application. Starting from that code means the project inherits a real, shipped alarm implementation rather than something assembled from scratch, along with its structure, its resource files and its years of accumulated behaviour. The primary language of the repository is Kotlin, and the tree shows the standard Gradle Android layout: an app/ module for the application, a build.gradle.kts build script at the root, a settings.gradle file, gradle.properties, the gradle/ directory with the wrapper, and both gradlew and gradlew.bat for Unix and Windows. There is a docs/ directory, a .githooks/ directory for Git hooks, and an .editorconfig file. The quality tooling is visible in the badges. The build status is tracked through a Gradle workflow on the develop branch, code coverage is reported through Codecov against the same branch, and a Codacy badge is present for static analysis. The default branch is develop rather than master, which tells you the project works on a development branch and that the released artefact is cut from somewhere else. The project also asks for help in a particular way: bug reports and feature requests go out by email to the developers, and the documentation says additional feature requests are appreciated. ## Where the app comes from and how to get it The application is distributed through two channels, and the documentation links both. The first is Google Play, with the listing at com.better.alarm, and the README carries a Google Play badge. The second is F-Droid, with a package page for the same identifier, and there is an F-Droid badge in the documentation. Having both is the point for a project of this kind. The Google Play listing carries install, rating and version badges that read from a live endpoint, so the README shows current store numbers rather than a hardcoded claim. F-Droid is the route for anyone who wants the build without a store account, and it is the distribution model that an open source project can point at as proof the code is what runs. There is no build documentation in the repository. The documentation does not describe how to compile the app from source, and it does not list the Android Gradle Plugin version, the Kotlin version or the minimum SDK. The repository does contain the wrapper scripts, so a Gradle build is possible, but the ingredients are not written down anywhere in what is published. So the practical answer for most people is to install the published build from Google Play or F-Droid, and the practical answer for a developer who wants to read the code is to clone the repository and read it. The gap between those two is a real characteristic of the project rather than something the documentation is failing to cover. Because the default branch is develop and the store version is cut separately, the code in the repository and the code in the store can differ. There are no GitHub releases to compare against, so there is no way to line the two up from the project side. ## The gentle pre alarm and the fade in are the real features Most of the engineering in this project is in the alarm path, and it is worth separating the parts. The gentle alarm is a separate low volume alarm that fires some time before the main one, and its purpose is stated in terms of sleep phases rather than decibels. The reasoning is that a quiet sound during a light sleep phase is less disruptive and produces a better wake-up, and the documentation's estimate is that thirty minutes of lead time is usually enough to reach a fast sleep phase. The fade in is separate from that, and the two combine in a specific order: the volume fades in over time, and the vibration does not start until the fade in has finished. That ordering is the detail that matters, because a device that buzzes while the sound is still faint defeats the point of a gentle alarm. Snooze gets more attention than it usually does in alarm apps. The default is one click with no time picker, which is the right default for a half-awake person, and the adjustment path is a long click on the snooze button that opens a time picker. Dismissal is protected by requiring a long click, so a pocket press cannot silently stop the alarm. The time picker choice follows the same logic. Rather than the spinning dial, the app uses a phone style keyboard as in Jelly Bean, which is faster for entering a time and does not require aiming at a rotating control. Together these six items are the specification of the app, and they explain why there is no feature list beyond them. ## Where Simple Alarm Clock is the wrong tool The first limit is that it is a single-purpose app in a category where single-purpose apps have been absorbed into the operating system. Modern Android ships a clock with alarms, world clock, timer and stopwatch, and the point of a separate alarm app is that it does one thing better, not that it does one thing. The removal of everything else is the product, but it also means there is no fallback inside the app for a feature you discover you need. The second is that the pre alarm is the wrong tool for some sleepers. The gentle alarm is a fixed early cue, not a measurement. It does not know when you are asleep, when you are awake, or whether the cue landed well, and the documentation says as much by describing a general fast sleep phase rather than tracking anything. A device that measures sleep and adapts is a different product with a different privacy profile. The third is the operational one. The repository publishes no GitHub releases, and the last push was on 2026-06-03, so the code you read on GitHub is several months old relative to today and is not tied to a version you can name. The store listing carries the version badge, and that is the artefact that matters to a user. The fourth is the licensing paperwork, which is worth flagging precisely. The documentation states Apache 2.0 in a License section and the badge points at the Apache licence page, but the top level of the repository does not list a LICENSE file, and the platform's own licence field for the project is not populated. If you intend to reuse code from this repository, confirm the licence position in the source you actually copy rather than relying on a badge, and read the AOSP-derived files with the same care, since the upstream origin carries its own terms. ## Licence, maintenance and what an upgrade looks like The project presents itself as Apache 2.0 licensed, stated in the License section of the documentation and shown on a licence badge pointing at the Apache licence text. The application code is branched from AOSP, which is the part that deserves attention if you plan to build on it, because upstream Android code comes with its own licensing history that travels with the files you copy. Take the documentation at its word for the app itself, and read the headers of the files you actually reuse. That is a smaller and clearer obligation than the Apache 2.0 terms themselves, which are well understood. On maintenance, the picture is a project with visible engineering discipline and a quiet release channel. There is a Gradle build workflow, Codecov coverage reporting and a Codacy static analysis badge, and the code is structured as a normal Gradle Android project with a Kotlin application module. Against that, the repository publishes no GitHub releases and the last push was on 2026-06-03, so the last four months have produced no commits in the tree. That combination is not alarming for an app whose feature set is finished, and it is also not the same as an actively developed project. It is the right thing to check before you depend on it: the store build may well be newer than the repository, and the repository may well be newer than the last store build, and there is no tag in the project that tells you which is which. For a user, the upgrade path is the store. For a developer, it is the develop branch and the absence of tags to pin against. ## Conclusion Simple Alarm Clock fits someone who wants one job done on a phone and will not accept a feature list, and it fits a developer who wants to read an alarm app that started as AOSP code rather than as a green field product. It does not fit anyone who needs a smart alarm with sleep tracking, a world clock or a backup device, because those features are the ones the project removed. Before adopting it, check the published version on the store you use, since the repository publishes no releases and the code you read on GitHub may be ahead of or behind what ships, and note that the licence is stated in the documentation rather than shipped as a file at the repository root. ## FAQ ### What is Simple Alarm Clock for Android and where can I get it? It is an alarm clock for Android smartphones and tablets, published under the identifier com.better.alarm. The project links both a Google Play listing and an F-Droid package, and the README carries badges for the current install count, rating and version on the store. ### What does the gentle alarm do in Simple Alarm Clock? A low volume alarm starts some time before the main alarm, on the reasoning that you will hear it during a good sleep phase and wake up more refreshed, with thirty minutes stated as usually enough to catch the fast sleep phase. The main alarm then fades in in volume, and the vibration starts only after the fade in is complete. ### How does snooze work in Simple Alarm Clock? Snooze works with one click and no time picker by default, or to a selected time through the picker. A long click on the snooze button opens an adjustable snooze time picker, and a long click is also required to dismiss, which prevents accidental dismissal. ### Is Simple Alarm Clock open source and what is it based on? The application code is branched from AOSP and the project states it is open source, with the licence given as Apache 2.0 in the documentation and on a licence badge. The top level of the repository does not list a LICENSE file, so check the headers of the files you reuse. ### Does the Simple Alarm Clock repository publish releases? No. The repository publishes no GitHub releases, and the default branch is develop. The last push was on 2026-06-03, so the repository code and the store build are not tied together by a tag you can compare. ## Sources - [Issues](https://github.com/yuriykulikov/AlarmClock/issues) - [README](https://github.com/yuriykulikov/AlarmClock/blob/develop/README.md) - [yuriykulikov/AlarmClock on GitHub](https://github.com/yuriykulikov/AlarmClock) --- Hysen Labs editorial analysis, written from the project's own repository and release notes. Cite the canonical page: https://hysenlabs.com/projects/yuriykulikov-alarmclock