Nightstand Alarm and Reminders — User Guide
A bedside display designed for nighttime use — power-efficient, sleep-friendly, and always readable.
This is the complete guide. If you just want the highlights, see the home page summary. For help or questions, see Support.
Contents
- Getting Started
- Night Mode (Bedside Clock)
- Clock Display Settings
- Alarms
- Reminders
- Medications
- Journal
- Notifications & Privacy
- Burn-in Prevention
- Power-Saving Tips
- Settings
- About
Getting Started
Nightstand Alarm and Reminders is a free app for iPhone and iPad that combines a calm bedside clock with alarms, reminders, medications, and a night journal. Everything runs on your device — there’s no account to create and no network connection.
A few things to do first:
- Allow notifications. Notifications are the only way the app can alert you. When you first open the app (or add your first alarm), you’ll be asked to allow notifications. If you skip this, alarms, reminders, and medication doses will not fire. You can allow them later in the iOS Settings app under Nightstand Alarm and Reminders.
- Explore with sample data (optional). In the app’s Settings you’ll find Add Sample Data, which fills the app with example alarms, reminders, and journal entries so you can see how everything works. You can erase it later.
- Arrange your tabs. The bottom tab bar is customizable. Pick the areas you use most — see Settings.
Night Mode (Bedside Clock)
Night Mode is the full-screen bedside clock, designed for a dark room.
- Large, dim text on black. The clock shows big, low-glare digits on a black background so it’s readable at a glance but never harsh.
- It slowly drifts. The time gently moves around the screen over time. This prevents OLED burn-in (see Burn-in Prevention).
- A clean face. The status bar and home indicator are hidden, so there’s nothing but the time.
- Reveal controls with a touch. Tap or long-press the screen to bring up the controls. They auto-hide after about 6 seconds so the screen returns to a clean state.
- Any orientation. The clock works in portrait or landscape and re-centers when you rotate the phone — handy when it’s lying on a nightstand.
- Quick journal capture. You can jot a note straight from the dark clock without leaving Night Mode and without a Face ID prompt (see Journal).
Tip: Prop the phone on a stand or lay it flat where you can see it from bed. Because the display is dim and drifting, it’s comfortable to leave on all night.
Clock Display Settings
You can tune almost everything about how the clock looks. Changes show in a live preview as you make them.
Time and date
- Seconds — show or hide the seconds.
- 12- or 24-hour — choose your preferred time format.
- Date — show or hide the date under the time.
Brightness
- Set the clock brightness anywhere from 15% to 100%. Lower is easier on your eyes at night and uses less power.
Color
- 12 power-ranked colors. Colors are ordered by how much OLED power they use. Deep red uses the least power and is the default; blue uses the most power and is the most sleep-disrupting. Warmer, dimmer colors are gentler at night.
- Custom color picker — if you’d rather pick your own shade.
Text
- 18 font families to match your taste.
- Size 60–220 pt (default 140) — go large so it’s readable across the room, or smaller to save power.
- Weight and italic — fine-tune the look.
Motion
- Drift speed and pause-between-moves — control how quickly the clock drifts and how long it rests between moves.
Shortcuts
- Reset to lowest power — one tap sets the display to the most battery-friendly combination (deep red text, low brightness, and so on). Great for overnight use.
Alarms
Set as many alarms as you like, each with its own schedule and tone.
Creating an alarm
- Time — pick when it should ring.
- Label — name it (for example, “Wake up” or “Gym”).
- Schedule — choose how it repeats:
- Once — a single alarm.
- Daily — every day.
- Weekly — on chosen weekdays.
- Monthly — on a chosen day-of-month.
- Custom — specific dates you pick.
Tones
- Choose from 8 gentle built-in tones. Some rise slowly — for example, “Dawn” eases in rather than jolting you awake. You can preview each tone before choosing.
When an alarm rings
- A full-screen ringing alert appears with Stop and Snooze.
- Volume follows the device ringer, so set your ringer volume to a level that will wake you.
Managing alarms
- Enable or disable each alarm without deleting it.
- Swipe to delete an alarm you no longer need.
Remember: Alarms fire through notifications, so notifications must be allowed for the app.
Reminders
Reminders are flexible nudges and tasks. They’re more powerful than alarms and are built for things like appointments, chores, exercises, and follow-ups.
Occurrence sources
Every reminder gets its dates from one of three sources:
- Once — a single event at a specific date and time.
- Repeats — calendar rules, such as:
- every day,
- every N weeks on chosen weekdays,
- a specific day of the month,
- once yearly,
- with an optional end date or a count (stop after N occurrences).
- Sequence — a hand-entered list of specific dates, for when the schedule doesn’t follow a neat rule.
Plain nudges vs. accountable tasks
Each reminder is one of two kinds:
- Plain nudge — a simple reminder that fires and is done.
- Accountable task — a reminder you’re meant to complete, with:
- a deadline,
- an expiry (after which it counts as missed),
- optional evidence you can attach when you complete it.
Categories
Group related reminders into a Category — for example, a “Knee recovery” category that gathers all the exercises and check-ins for that goal. Categories give you a shared color default and a place to see everything for one goal together.
Color coding
Colors cascade so the most specific setting wins:
occurrence color → overrides → reminder color → overrides → category default
Choose from 12 presets or a custom color.
Sound
- 8 built-in tones, or import your own audio (it’s trimmed to 30 seconds).
- “Ring until stopped” — a full-screen escalation for critical reminders that keeps alerting until you deal with it.
Views and tracking
- Month calendar view — see reminders laid out across the month.
- Due list — what needs attention now, with Mark Done, Snooze, and Silence actions.
- History log — a timestamped record of every event: notified, done, snoozed, silenced, and missed.
- Adherence reports — see how consistently you’re keeping up, both per reminder and per category.
- Search — find reminders by name, notes, or category.
Medications
Medications work like reminders but are tuned for taking doses on schedule.
Scheduling doses
- Frequency shortcuts — once, twice, or three times daily, with sensible preset times (morning, noon, dinner), or set a custom schedule.
- Dose window — instead of a single exact instant, a dose has an on-time window, so a dose taken a little early or late still counts as on time.
Handling a dose
When a dose is due you can:
- Mark taken — records the exact time you took it.
- Skip — record that you intentionally skipped it.
- Snooze — remind me again shortly.
The dose bubble
- When a dose is due, a floating bubble drifts over the app. Tap it to jump straight to that dose. It respects Reduce Motion if you have that enabled in iOS.
Tags and adherence
- Each medication gets a 4-letter, color-coded tag for quick recognition.
- An adherence chart shows how well you’re keeping up over a window you choose.
Break-through alerts
- Medication reminders are time-sensitive, so they break through Focus and Do Not Disturb — a missed dose shouldn’t be silently swallowed by a Focus mode.
Privacy note: You can anonymize medication names on the lock screen — see Notifications & Privacy.
Journal
A simple place for quick bedside notes.
- Grouped by night, newest first — so each night’s thoughts stay together.
- Capture from Night Mode without a Face ID prompt, so you can quickly note something without fully leaving the dark clock.
- Full-text search that shows the matching line, so you can find that note fast.
- Edit or delete any entry.
Notifications & Privacy
Notifications are the only alert channel. Alarms, reminders, and medication doses all fire through iOS notifications. You must allow notifications for the app or nothing will alert you. If you’re not getting alerts, check the iOS Settings app under Nightstand Alarm and Reminders and make sure notifications are on.
Privacy is built in:
- Anonymize medication names on the lock screen — turn this on and every medication alert simply reads “Medication reminder,” so nobody glancing at your phone sees what you take.
- No system integrations by design. The app deliberately does not use Siri, Shortcuts, Spotlight, App Intents, or activity donations. Nothing about your reminders or medications is offered to other parts of the system.
- Everything is on-device. The app makes no network connections and has no third-party SDKs, ads, or analytics. See the full Privacy Policy.
Burn-in Prevention
OLED screens can develop burn-in if the same bright pixels stay lit in the same place for a long time — exactly the risk for a clock left on all night. Nightstand Alarm and Reminders avoids this in a few ways:
- The clock drifts. The time slowly moves around the screen so no single group of pixels is lit continuously in one spot.
- You control the motion. Adjust drift speed and the pause between moves so the movement suits you — slow and subtle, or a little more frequent.
- Dim text on black. Most of the screen is true black (those pixels are effectively off on OLED), and the text itself is dim, which further reduces the risk and the power draw.
Together these keep the clock safe to leave on overnight.
Power-Saving Tips
Leaving a screen on all night uses power. Here’s how to keep it minimal:
- Use deep red text. It’s the default and the most OLED-power-efficient color. Warmer, darker colors cost the least.
- Avoid blue. Blue is the most power-hungry color and the most sleep-disrupting.
- Lower the brightness. Anything from 15% up works; lower brightness saves power and is gentler at night.
- Use a smaller font. Fewer lit pixels means less power. Pick a size that’s still comfortably readable from bed.
- Tap “Reset to lowest power.” One tap in the display settings switches the clock to the most battery-friendly combination.
- Keep it plugged in. For all-night use, charging on the nightstand is ideal.
Settings
Tab bar
- The bottom tab bar is customizable. Choose up to 5 of: Home, Alarms, Reminders, Meds, Journal, Settings. Anything you don’t pin lives in the ☰ menu, so the app stays tidy and focused on what you use.
- On an iPad in full screen there is no bar and no ☰: a sidebar on the left lists every section, and Meds and Reminders show their doses, lists and calendar side by side. Night Mode and the Home clock draw larger to fill the bigger screen.
History retention
- Choose a retention window: 14 days, 30 days, 90 days, or 1 year. This controls the default view window — but note that full history is always kept and never auto-deleted. Your records are safe regardless of the setting.
Sounds
- The built-in tones for alarms, reminders, and medications, plus custom audio import for reminders (imported audio is trimmed to 30 seconds).
Privacy toggles
- Anonymize medication names on the lock screen (see Notifications & Privacy).
Backup, restore, export, import
- Automatic iCloud Drive backups — the app backs up to your own iCloud Drive every 6 hours when data has changed.
- Back Up Now — trigger a manual backup any time.
- Restore — restore from a backup. This replaces all current data, but the app snapshots first so you can undo if the restore wasn’t what you wanted.
- Export / Import JSON — export a hand-editable JSON file you fully control, and import it back. This is the easy way to move data to a new phone (see Support).
Erase
- Erase All Data — wipes your data after asking you to type a confirmation word. It preserves your backups, so this clears the app without touching what’s saved in iCloud Drive or your exported files.
Sample data
- Add Sample Data — fills the app with examples so you can explore. You can erase it afterward.
About
Nightstand Alarm and Reminders is a free app for iPhone and iPad built for peaceful, power-friendly nights. It’s fully offline: no network, no third-party SDKs, no account, and no tracking, ads, or analytics. All your data stays on your device, and any backups go to your own iCloud Drive or a JSON file you export and control.