Where should a teacher put the code?

On the bag of marking by the door is the strongest option, because you cannot leave without it anyway. The bathroom mirror, the kettle and the fridge all work too. What matters is that reaching it means standing up and crossing a room.

Mornio for teachers

First period starts at 8:45. It has never once been moved.

Q: I mark before school. Can I set an earlier alarm too?

Yes, though that needs Pro, since the free tier covers one protected alarm. Some people protect the early one and leave the later one as an ordinary alarm, on the basis that the first is the one that actually gets dismissed half asleep.

Q: Does Mornio need an account?

No. There is no sign-up, no email and no password. Alarms and registered codes stay on your iPhone.

Mornio is an iPhone alarm for people who turn the alarm off without really remembering it. To dismiss it you get up and scan a code you left across the room. Then, a few minutes later, it checks you are still up.

Download on theApp Store

Three Protected Mornings free · No account, no card · iPhone, iOS 26.1+

See the morning it is built for

5:00AM

The alarm is early because the job starts before the bell does.

The marking came home. It is still in the bag on the chair, along with the planner and the lanyard, because the evening ran out before the books did.

Five o’clock is not ambition. It is the only hour left in which to do the part nobody sees.

6:22AM

And the bag is exactly where it was.

Which tells you everything before you have found your phone. The hour of marking is gone. The printing is gone. What is left is the drive, and arriving with nothing prepared.

You will still be there for 8:45. You will just be there having already lost the morning.

Thirty of them arrive whether or not you are ready.

Lanyard, travel mug, planner, keys, and a bag of exercise books that will come home unmarked again tonight. Out of the door with the day already borrowed from tomorrow.

A lesson taught off the cuff that you had actually planned properly
The marking pushed to an evening that was already spoken for
Somebody covering your gate duty or your first ten minutes
And the part nobody sees: starting a day of being calm for other people without any of it yourself

What it actually costs

Somebody else pays for it, which is the bit that stings.

Most jobs let a late start be a private matter. Teaching does not. The room fills on time, the gate opens on time, and if you are not there, a colleague is standing in your doorway instead of having their free period.

The room, at 8:45

Chairs down, board blank, nothing on the desks. Whatever was going to be set up in the twenty minutes before the bell was not set up.

The colleague covering

Nobody makes a fuss. They just lose the one free period they had, and you both know it. That is a small debt, and it is a real one.

The gate

It opens at the same minute every day and does not care about your night. Arriving as the last of them go in sets the tone for everything after.

The books, again

The hour you were going to use is the hour you lost. So they go back in the bag, and the same evening happens again tonight.

The problem is not that your alarm is too quiet.

It is that it is too easy to finish. One swipe and the whole system is over, decided by the least awake version of you, at the end of a term that has been long since October.

An ordinary alarm

Ring
→
Swipe
→
Bed

Three steps, and every one of them can be done with your eyes shut and no memory of it afterwards.

Mornio

Ring
→
Get up
→
Scan
→
Checks again

Stopping the alarm takes a waking action, in another part of the room. And dismissing it is not the end of the process.

How it works

An alarm that makes you get out of bed, then checks you stayed out of it.

Three things happen, and the third one is the part other alarms skip.

The alarm rings

Built on Apple’s system alarm, so it sounds through silent mode, a Focus and a locked screen.

You get up to stop it

Dismissing the alarm means reaching the code you registered, wherever you chose to leave it. Only that exact code works, so there is no shortcut from under the duvet.

Then Mornio checks again

A few minutes after you dismiss it, the stay-awake check asks you to confirm you are still up. No answer, and protection restarts.

Where to put it

Put it on the bag you cannot leave without.

Teachers have an advantage here that most people do not: there is already an object you must physically pick up before you can go anywhere, and it is already by the door. Stick the code on the marking bag and the alarm ends at exactly the point the day begins.

Beside the bedReachable lying down, which is where a 5am alarm goes to die.
The marking bag by the doorThe strongest option. You cannot leave without it, so the code is never somewhere you forgot to go.
The kettleThe alarm ends and the travel mug gets filled in one movement.
Bathroom mirrorLight, cold water and a different room, all in one trip.

Use a printed QR code or an ordinary household barcode you already own. Up to two backups can be registered, so three codes in total. Need one to print? Our free QR code generator makes one in the browser and never sends it anywhere.

The honest way to try it

Don’t test Mornio in the holidays.

Everything about waking up sounds manageable in week six of August. Use it on three actual school mornings, which is what the free trial is for.

Morning one

Learn the flow

Set the alarm, stick a code on the marking bag, and find out what having to stand up actually feels like at five.

Morning two

Adjust the placement

Too close and nothing changed. If the bag lives in the same room as the bed, move the code to the kettle instead.

Morning three

Judge it

Did the hour before school actually happen? That is the only question, and by day three you can answer it.

Three Protected Mornings are free, with every Pro feature included. No account, no card.

Plans

For most teachers, the free tier is genuinely enough.

A start time that never changes needs one alarm. That is what Free covers, and saying so beats selling you something you will not use.

Free

No card, no account

One protected alarm, which is what a fixed start needs
QR or barcode Wake Check
Bedtime safety check
Recent alarm history

Where most people on a fixed timetable should start, and probably stay.

Mornio Pro

Monthly or annual, shown in the App Store

Unlimited protected alarms, for a second early one before school
Stay-awake check and automatic restart
Backup alarm protection
Full alarm history

Worth it if you protect a marking alarm as well, or if getting up is not the same as staying up.

Being straight about the limits: Mornio reduces the chance that a half-asleep dismissal costs you the morning. It cannot promise you will never oversleep, it cannot help if the phone is off or flat, and there is a deliberate emergency dismissal. It needs iOS 26.1 or later and there is no Android version.

Pricing is shown in the App Store and may vary by region. Subscriptions renew until cancelled and can be managed in your Apple account. See the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.

5:06AM

Six minutes after the alarm, with the hour still in front of you.

Set Mornio tonight. Stick the code on the bag you cannot leave without. Then find out what the day is like when the marking got done before the gate opened.

Download on theApp Store

3 Protected Mornings free · No account · No card · iPhone, iOS 26.1+

Questions

Asked in the staff room

My start time is the same every day. Do I need the paid version?

Probably not, and it would be silly to pretend otherwise. The free tier covers one protected alarm with the QR or barcode Wake Check, which is exactly what a fixed 5am start needs. Pro is for people who need several different alarms, or who want the stay-awake check and the backup alarm on top.

What about weekends, INSET days and holidays?

An alarm repeats on the days you choose and can be switched off entirely for a break, with nothing lost. There are no streaks and no penalty for a morning off, so six weeks in summer costs you nothing and the setup is still there in September.

Will the alarm sound if my phone is on silent or in a Focus?

Yes. Mornio’s alarm is built on Apple’s AlarmKit, the system alarm framework, so it sounds through silent mode, Focus and a locked screen. That is also why Mornio requires iOS 26.1 or later and is iPhone only.

What happens if I dismiss the alarm and fall back asleep?

That is what the stay-awake check is for. A few minutes after you dismiss the alarm, Mornio asks you to confirm you are still up. You pick the delay when you create the alarm, or switch it off. If you do not respond, Mornio restarts protection.

Where should I put the code?

On the bag of marking by the door is the strongest option, because you cannot leave without it anyway. The kettle, the bathroom mirror and the fridge all work too. What matters is that reaching it means standing up and crossing a room, so if the bag lives in the bedroom, pick something else.

I mark before school. Can I set an earlier alarm too?

Yes, though a second protected alarm needs Pro, since the free tier covers one. Some people protect the early one and leave the later one as an ordinary alarm, on the basis that the first is the one that actually gets dismissed half asleep.

Does Mornio need an account?

No. There is no sign-up, no email and no password. Your alarms and registered codes stay on your iPhone.

Is Mornio available on Android?

No. Mornio is iPhone only. The reliable alarm is built on Apple’s AlarmKit, which has no Android equivalent, so there is no Android version and none is planned.