Simple Alarm Clock

Review by eFreeware

If you sleep through your phone's default alarm, or you set alarms most nights and resent how long it takes, this app is written for you. Simple Alarm Clock comes from Moula Software and has been on the Play Store since December 2011, which is a long run for a utility that does one job. The pitch is narrow on purpose: set an alarm quickly, make it loud, and make it hard to silence by accident.

That combination is what you get. The alarm time is entered on a numeric keypad rather than by spinning wheels or dragging sliders, alarms are listed in the order they will ring, and the default sound is described as professionally mastered to be as loud as it can be. For a heavy sleeper who needs a morning alarm to be unmissable, or someone juggling reminders during the day, this is a sensible place to start. The app is free, it carries ads, and it offers in-app purchases.

Setting an alarm without the fiddling

The core of the app is the way you create an alarm. You key the time in on a number pad, which the developer calls the easiest way to set an alarm. I like the reasoning behind that: most alarm apps make you hunt for the right hour and minute, and typing digits is simply fewer steps.

There is a second, quieter convenience I would expect to matter more over time. Alarms are sorted by when they will next sound, so the top of the list is always the next thing that will happen. If you keep several alarms going at once, that ordering saves you from scanning a list of times and working it out yourself.

Each alarm can carry a short message, which is useful when an alarm is a reminder rather than a wake-up call. You can also choose between AM/PM and 24-hour display, and switch any alarm on or off with a single touch.

Waking up gently, then not so gently

The app offers an optional fade-in: volume and vibration rise slowly rather than hitting you at full strength. The idea is to be pulled out of deep sleep gradually instead of startled awake. If that sounds too soft for you, the developer says the alarm becomes extremely loud after a while, and there is a setting that overrides your phone's volume so the alarm is not held back by a low ringer.

The surrounding design supports the intent: a loud sound, a volume override and a fade that ends at full strength.

You are not locked into the built-in sound. The alarm tone can be any ringtone, song or sound already on your phone, so if a particular track gets you moving, you can use it.

Stopping an alarm on purpose

The optional three-button deactivation is the feature I would point to first for anyone who has ever silenced an alarm half-asleep and missed the appointment. Turning the alarm off takes three separate presses, which the developer frames as requiring you to be genuinely awake. It is optional, so you can leave it off on days when speed matters more than certainty.

Snoozing goes the other way. A single large Snooze button handles that, and you can set how long the gap between alarms lasts. That gives you a soft option and a firm option in the same app, which is a reasonable split: easy to postpone, harder to cancel outright.

Weekly repeats cover the rest of the schedule. When you create an alarm you pick the days it should sound, so a work-week alarm, a weekend alarm and a twice-a-week reminder can all coexist and recur on their own.

The extras beyond the alarm

Two tools sit alongside the alarm function: a timer and a stopwatch. Neither is unusual, but having them in the same app means you are not opening something else for a kitchen timer or a timed task during the day.

The app also suggests alarms based on the ones you have set before, which can help you avoid forgetting work or school. The reasoning is straightforward: if you always set an alarm for a certain morning, the app can prompt you toward it.

The interface is available in a long list of languages, including English, Spanish, French, German, Polish, Dutch, Portuguese, Russian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Vietnamese, Arabic, Hindi, Chinese and Indonesian, with more beyond those. A recent update added Farsi, Greek, Hebrew, Malay and Ukrainian among others, and the layout is built to work on tablets and large screens as well as phones.

What the app asks of you

There are two things to weigh before installing. The first is that this is a free app supported by ads, and it also offers in-app purchases. A recent update mentions a Pro version, so there is a paid side to the app.

The second is that the app is built around one job. It sets alarms, repeats them on chosen days, and adds a timer and stopwatch. If you want a clock app to do more than that, this one is deliberately not trying to.

The loudness is also a design choice rather than a neutral one. A volume override and a sound tuned for maximum loudness are exactly what a heavy sleeper needs, but they are also the reason you should think about where the phone sits relative to anyone else in the room.

Who this fits, and how it has held up

The people most likely to get value here are heavy sleepers who need an alarm that cannot be ignored, and anyone who sets several alarms a week and wants that to take seconds rather than a minute of scrolling. Someone who relies on a single gentle wake-up might find the emphasis on volume and the three-button stop to be more than they need, but the fade-in and the optional nature of the stricter settings leave room to soften it.

The numbers suggest the approach has found an audience: over 50 million installs, a 4.5 average from more than 564,000 ratings, and a release date going back to 2011. The app was updated in April 2026, so it is still being worked on. Those figures do not tell you whether the alarm will wake you personally, but they do indicate a widely used app rather than an abandoned experiment.

A dependable choice for hard-to-wake sleepers

Simple Alarm Clock is worth installing if your current alarm is not doing the job. The three-button stop and the one-button snooze cover both the person who silences alarms in their sleep and the person who just wants ten more minutes.

It is free, ad-supported and offers in-app purchases, and it is a focused tool rather than a general clock suite. For heavy sleepers, shift workers and anyone who runs a handful of weekly alarms, that focus is the appeal. If you want a quiet, minimal alarm, the loudness-first design will feel like more than you asked for.

What's new in version 8.6.9

Added support for 8 new languages (Farsi/Persian, Greek, Hebrew, Dutch, Malay, Ukrainian, Thai, Vietnamese) and improved multiple texts. Fixed an issue with the Pro version in the last release. Improved Pro version messaging for clarity.