If you are here because your alarm came back after you turned it off, that was not a bug. It is the one feature Mornio exists for, and this page explains it.
The problem it solves
Almost every alarm treats dismissal as success. The noise stops and the app's job is done. But sleep inertia does not end when the alarm does: for roughly 15 to 60 minutes after waking your alertness and judgement are impaired, including your judgement about how awake you are.
That is why “five more minutes” feels completely reasonable at 6:32. The decision is being made by the version of you least qualified to make it, and you have just removed the strongest signal telling you to stay up.
Getting out of bed is step one. The stay-awake check is what notices whether you stayed there.
How it works, step by step
- The alarm rings and you pass the Wake Check by scanning your registered code, which requires being out of bed.
- Mornio starts a timer for the delay you chose.
- The stay-awake check fires and asks you to confirm you are still up.
- You respond, and the morning is recorded as a success. Or you do not, and protection restarts.
When protection restarts, the alarm comes back and you have to pass the Wake Check again by walking to your code. There is no penalty, nothing is charged, and nothing is reported anywhere. The only consequence is more alarm.
Choosing your delay
| Delay | Best for |
|---|---|
| 2 minutes | You sit down on the edge of the bed and drift. Catches the immediate relapse. |
| 3 minutes | The default. A reasonable starting point for most people. |
| 5 minutes | You are usually fine but occasionally lose the thread. |
| 10 minutes | You move around first, then go back to bed “just for a second”. |
| No second check | You reliably stay up once you are on your feet and only need the scan. |
If you keep passing the check without noticing it, that is the system working rather than a reason to remove it. Lengthen the delay instead. A check you resent is a check you will switch off on exactly the wrong night.
Why your alarm came back
The most common support question we get, and the answer is almost always one of these:
- You did not respond to the stay-awake check. Protection restarted, as designed. Lengthen the delay or turn the check off if it is not what you want.
- It was the backup alarm. Mornio schedules one four minutes after the primary. On a one-time alarm it cancels once you pass the Wake Check. On a repeating alarm it stays scheduled, because cancelling it would remove all future occurrences, so a repeating alarm's backup can still ring after you are up. That is a known limitation rather than an accident.
- You used the emergency exit. That dismisses the alarm but is never recorded as a successful morning.
Turning it off
Set the stay-awake delay to No second check when creating or editing the alarm, or change the default under Settings. You keep the Wake Check and the alarm; you just lose the follow-up.
We would rather you turned it off deliberately than uninstalled the app because it felt like nagging. It is your alarm.
What it cannot do
Being straight about this: the stay-awake check does not detect sleep. It detects that you did not respond to a prompt, which is a good proxy but only a proxy. You can defeat it by responding and then getting back into bed, and no alarm app can tell the difference.
It also cannot compensate for not sleeping enough. If you need the check to fire every morning, the underlying issue is probably sleep debt rather than dismissal technique, and 30 minutes earlier to bed will do more than any setting here.
Is it free?
It is included in the 3 Protected Mornings every new user gets, with no card required, which is deliberately enough to find out whether it catches you. After that it is part of Mornio Pro at $7.99 monthly or $29.99 yearly. The free tier keeps the alarm and the Wake Check but not the follow-up. Details on is Mornio free.