How to Use Your Phone as a Bedside Alarm Clock

Whether you use your phone as an alarm to get up in the morning, like to listen to podcasts or sleep sounds as you drift off, or simply want to be sure the battery is full come morning, a nightstand charger is a handy gadget. We are big fans of wireless chargers. Android phones and iPhones also offer nightstand modes to transform your device into a bedside alarm clock for the night.

Having your smartphone sit on your nightstand without enabling a quiet mode of some sort is a bad idea. If notifications are waking you up, check out our guide on silencing your gadgets at night. You should also check out how to create a bedtime routine. But every sleep specialist we have spoken with suggests leaving your phone outside the bedroom at night.

That said, it’s hard to break the habit of sleeping next to your phone, and if it’s on the nightstand anyway, it may as well make itself useful.

• How to Use iPhone's StandBy Mode
• How to Use Apple Watch Nightstand Mode
• How to Use Android Bedtime Mode
• How to Set Up Google Pixel and Pixel Stand for Bedtime
• What About Alarm Clock Apps?

Special offer for Gear readers: Get WIRED for just $5 ($25 off). This includes unlimited access to WIRED.com, full Gear coverage, and subscriber-only newsletters. Subscriptions help fund the work we do every day.

If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. Learn more.

Apple’s StandBy is one of our favorite iOS 17 features. It allows you to use your iPhone as a bedside alarm clock, photo frame, or display for activities or widgets.

To use StandBy, you must have a MagSafe charger that allows you to attach your iPhone in landscape orientation. You can find such a charger in our guides to the best Apple 3-in-1 wireless chargers or the best MagSafe accessories. The Twelve South HiRise 3 Deluxe ($150) is our current favorite.

1. Open Settings on your iPhone, scroll down and tap StandBy.
2. Make sure StandBy is toggled on.
3. You should also tap Display and choose when the display should turn off, whether you want to use Night Mode so it dims and has a red tint when it’s dark to minimize disturbance, and whether you want Motion to Wake the display at night. (We recommend toggling both on.)
4. Once set up, simply place your iPhone on a MagSafe charger in landscape orientation and press the side button to see the clock.
5. It will show a clock and calendar by default, but you can tweak it by swiping up and down. You can swipe right to left to get photos with the time display. Swipe again, and you get a large clock display. You can swipe up and down on each mode to cycle through more options.
6. Your iPhone will remember your preferred clock style for that charger, so you might set one style for the charger on your nightstand and something else for the charger on your desk or kitchen counter.

Note: The Always-On Display can stay on permanently if you have an iPhone 14 Pro, iPhone 14 Pro Max, iPhone 15 Pro, or iPhone 15 Pro Max. For older models, simply tap the screen, bump the nightstand, or ask Siri to bring StandBy to life.

The Apple Watch has long had a Nightstand mode that displays the time. Like StandBy, you need a charger that supports Nightstand mode and ideally affords you an easy view of your Apple Watch screen. We like the Belkin Boost Charge Pro Portable Fast Charger for Apple Watch ($60). Here’s how to set up Nightstand mode:

1. Open Settings on your Apple Watch.
2. Go to General > Nightstand Mode and turn it on.
3. If you want to set any alarms, open the Alarms app on your Apple Watch.
4. Tap the plus icon to add an alarm and choose your time. You can also just ask Siri to set an alarm.
5. When the alarm sounds, you can press the Digital Crown to snooze it for nine minutes or the Side button to turn it off.

Although Bedtime started out as a Pixel exclusive feature, Google has rolled it into the standard Android Clock app. If your phone doesn't have the app, install Google’s Clock app from the Play Store.

We suggest getting a stand (see our Best Wireless Chargers guide) to prop your phone on the nightstand. The Twelve South PowerPic Mod Wireless Charger ($60) is our current favorite.

1. Open the Google Clock app on your Android phone.
2. Tap on the Bedtime tab at the bottom right.
3. Tap Get started and you can set regular alarm times, choose to use the Sunrise Alarm (which brightens your screen to wake you more gently before the alarm sound), and choose your alarm sound and whether you want your phone to vibrate. You can even add a Google Assistant Routine if you have a morning automation set up.
4. The next tab allows you to set a Bedtime, which includes a reminder 15 minutes before and ensures that your phone is automatically silenced when you try to sleep. (Note: You can set specific contacts as exceptions so their calls come through even in Do Not Disturb mode, and repeat callers and alarms will also reach you.) Bedtime mode will also automatically dim your screen and switch from color to gray scale on some phones.
5. For most phones, simply tap the screen or bump the nightstand to see the time during the night. Some phones might have always-on display options, usually under Settings > Display or Lock Screen.

If you have a Google Pixel phone and a Pixel Stand charger, you can set your phone as a photo frame when on the stand and tweak a few other settings. Here’s how:

1. When you put your Pixel on the Pixel Stand, you should get a Do more while charging pop-up, and you can tap Next to get started. Alternatively, go into Settings on your Pixel, tap Connected devices, and tap the Settings cog next to Pixel Stand.
2. You can make the screen turn off automatically when it’s dark, have the dock trigger Do Not Disturb, set up Photo frame and pick albums from your Google Photos app for it to cycle through, and set up the Bedtime mode we covered above.
3. If you have the second-generation Pixel Stand ($70), you can also tweak the charging mode for slower charging to keep the fan quiet at night.

There are floods of alarm clock apps in the App Store and Play Store, but none we can wholeheartedly recommend. Some are pricey, some collect a lot of data, and many are glitchy, occasionally failing to go off or going off when they aren’t meant to. That said, we have tried one that we liked.

If you have Google Play Pass, you might want to try Alarmy for Android, as it is included for free. You can also get Alarmy for iPhone, but the free version has ads, and I’m not convinced the Premium version is worth the regular price of $5 a month or $60 a year. The app is great for folks who sleep through alarms, because you can set missions (puzzles or tasks) that you must complete to stop the sound. It also offers sleep sounds and basic sleep tracking.

If you can’t get what you want from your phone, or want to leave it out of the bedroom at night, check out our guides to the best sunrise alarm clocks or best sound machines instead.