DayPlay: ADHD Alarm & Routine

Turning the alarm off is easy. Getting up is hard.

DayPlay is an alarm that refuses to be the end of the conversation. It rings through Silent mode and Focus, and when mission lock is on, the stop button does not send you back to bed. It opens your routine on step one, and the alarm keeps ringing until you confirm that step, or until you take a photo of the spot you chose the night before.

A REAL ALARM, NOT A NOTIFICATION

On iOS 26 and later DayPlay uses Apple's AlarmKit, the same system the built in Clock app uses. Full screen alert, Lock Screen presence, Dynamic Island, and sound that cuts through Silent mode and Do Not Disturb. On older systems DayPlay falls back to a burst of time sensitive notifications and tells you so on screen, because an alarm app that quietly does less than it promised is worse than no alarm app.

MISSION LOCK

Choose what "awake" means. With mission lock on, stopping the alarm opens the task instead of ending it. Confirm your first step, or set a morning proof: a photo of the place you walk to, like the bathroom sink or the coffee machine. Then only a matching photo taken there stops the sound. The matching happens on your phone and the photo never leaves it.

COUNTED SNOOZES

Unlimited snoozing is the problem, not the feature. Give yourself zero, one, two or three snoozes per routine. When they run out the snooze button is not greyed out. It is gone.

ESCAPE PROTECTION

Force quitting the app or turning the volume down while the mission is locked does not end the alarm. The system alarm comes back within about thirty seconds. Getting past DayPlay takes more effort than getting up.

THEN THE ROUTINE PLAYS ITSELF

Once you are up, DayPlay plays your routine the way a music player plays an album. One step fills the screen, a large countdown runs, and there is one button. You never have to hold the whole list in your head. The countdown stays on your Lock Screen and Dynamic Island, and there is an Apple Watch companion for done, skip and…