Search for a heavy-sleeper alarm and you get two completely different kinds of product on the same results page: clocks that are louder than anything you own, and apps that make you scan a barcode in the kitchen. They are not competing. They fix different failures, and buying the wrong one is the most common reason people conclude that nothing works.
Work out which failure is yours first
There is one observation that sorts this, and it costs nothing. Tomorrow morning, at the moment you wake, notice a single thing: is the alarm still going?
Still ringing means the sound did not reach you, and everything in the hardware column below is relevant. Already silent means it reached you fine and you ended it without forming a memory of doing so, which is a different problem entirely and is not solved by decibels.
The bottom two rows are where our own product sits, and we have marked them so you can see us doing it. The top two genuinely point at hardware, and no amount of app design changes that.
The five options, and what each one actually does
A standard phone alarm
Already in your hand, free, and set in seconds. On iPhone it rings through Silent mode and Focus, so the common belief that the silent switch killed it is usually wrong.
Where it fails: it ends with one tap, from wherever you are lying. That is fine if you wake properly, and useless if the failure is what your hand does before your judgement arrives.
A separate physical alarm clock
An ordinary clock on a chest of drawers across the room. Cheap, and it does two things no app can: a separately powered alarm clock does not rely on your phone being charged, and it lets you keep the phone out of the bedroom entirely.
Where it fails: it still ends with one button. Put it across the room and you get the walk, which genuinely helps, right up until you learn to make the walk half asleep and get back into bed. A clock cannot tell the difference.
An extra-loud alarm clock
The direct answer to not hearing the alarm. If you have ever slept through a phone at full volume on a hard surface a metre from your head, this is the category worth trying.
Where it fails: if you already hear your current alarm, extra volume buys you nothing and costs everyone else in the building something. It is also, like any clock, a single button.
A bed shaker or vibrating alarm
A pad that goes under the pillow or mattress and vibrates, usually paired with a clock. It adds a physical stimulus rather than relying on sound reaching you, which is why the category is widely used by people who are deaf or hard of hearing, and why it is worth considering if you share a room with someone the noise would wake.
Where it fails: the same place everything else does. Being woken and staying awake are separate problems, and a shaker addresses the first one only.
A mission or barcode alarm app
An app where dismissing the alarm requires completing something: scanning a specific code you placed in another room, solving a problem, taking a photo of a set location. Some also follow up minutes later to confirm you did not go straight back to bed.
Where it fails: it is no louder than any other alarm on your phone, so it does nothing for the first two rows of the table above. It needs a charged phone. It needs five minutes of setup. And a badly chosen mission you can do in your sleep is no better than a button.
The one-line version
Hardware makes the alarm harder to miss. A mission app makes it harder to finish. Most people who say nothing works have been buying the first kind for the second problem.
Side by side
| Phone alarm | Physical clock | Extra-loud clock | Bed shaker | Mission app | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Helps if you never hear it | No | Varies | Yes, directly | Yes, without sound | No |
| Works without hearing | No | No | No | Yes | No |
| Needs you out of bed to stop it | No | If across the room | If across the room | No | Yes, by design |
| Can tell a sleepy dismissal from a real one | No | No | No | No | Yes, with a code |
| Checks again after you dismiss it | No | No | No | No | Some do |
| Independent of your phone | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| Lets you keep the phone out of the bedroom | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| Travels with you | Yes | Pack it | Pack it | Pack it | Yes |
| Ongoing cost | None | One-off | One-off | One-off | Often paid |
The setup we would actually recommend
For a morning that genuinely cannot be missed, the strongest arrangement is not one product. It is two mechanisms that fail differently: a separately powered clock across the room, plus a phone alarm that cannot be finished from bed. Two devices, two power sources, and two different failure modes rather than the same one twice.
For an ordinary Tuesday, pick the one that matches your row in the table above and stop there. Buying all of it is how people end up with three alarms they have all learned to ignore.
Which should you buy?
- You wake to find the alarm still ringing
- Start with volume and placement, then a louder clock. This is the hardware case and an app will not help you.
- Sound has never been enough, or you are hard of hearing
- A bed shaker or vibrating alarm. It is the only option here that does not depend on hearing.
- You want the phone out of the bedroom
- A separate clock. No app can give you this, ours included.
- You wake to find the alarm already off, with no memory of stopping it
- A mission or barcode app. Nothing you can buy makes a single button harder to press.
- You get up, turn it off, and are back in bed ten minutes later
- An app that follows up after dismissal. A clock cannot notice this happened.
- The morning is genuinely unmissable
- Both. A clock across the room and a mission alarm on the phone.
Where Mornio fits, and where it does not
Mornio is a mission alarm for iPhone. You dismiss it by getting up and scanning a QR code or ordinary household barcode you registered somewhere away from the bed, and a few minutes later it checks that you are still up and restarts protection if you do not answer. That covers the bottom two rows of the diagnostic and nothing above them.
It is not louder than the Clock app, because it uses the same system alarm. It needs iOS 26.1 or later, which rules out a lot of phones. There is no Android version. And if your phone is off or flat it does nothing at all, which is the entire argument for owning a clock as well.
If the diagnostic put you in the bottom half, the heavy-sleeper page goes through all four failure modes in more detail, and how a get-out-of-bed alarm works covers the mechanism and where to put the code.
Frequently asked
Do heavy sleepers need a clock or an app?
Whichever matches the failure. Not hearing it is a hardware problem. Turning it off half asleep is not, and no clock on the market addresses it. Plenty of people end up with both.
Are extra-loud alarm clocks worth it?
If the alarm is not reaching you, yes, and it is the most direct fix available. If you already wake to the sound, extra volume adds noise for everyone else in the house without changing your outcome.
Do bed shakers actually work?
They add a physical stimulus rather than relying on sound alone, which is why they are widely used by people who are deaf or hard of hearing, and why they suit shared rooms. Like every option here, the alarm still ends with a single dismissal, so they address being woken rather than staying up.
Can I use a clock and an app together?
Yes, and for an unmissable morning it is the strongest setup available. The point is that they fail differently: a flat phone does not stop the clock, and a clock cannot tell that you pressed its button in your sleep.
What if I hear the alarm and turn it off anyway?
Then the alarm did its job and volume is irrelevant. What failed is that stopping it took one action you could complete without fully waking. Our guide on turning the alarm off without remembering covers what is happening, and sleep inertia explains the window it happens in.
Is a separate clock better than a phone?
For two specific things, yes. A separately powered alarm clock does not rely on your phone being charged, and it lets you keep the phone out of the bedroom. For everything else it is a single button on a different object.