Google clock & A.W.

[electricpete]

As you may have seen in the news, the updated google clock app (for phone) now coordinates with Android wear.

I tried it out and like it. Here's my comments:

===========Pros ================
P1 - Phone alarm is customizeable with slowly increasing volume. Starts imperceptibly soft and increases over customizable interval (5 seconds, 20 seconds, whatever). That is a gentler way to wake up.
P2 - When the alarm that you set on your phone goes off, it also activates the watch alarm with continuous vibration until alarm is dismissed or snoozed.
P3 - The alarm that you set on the phone can be snoozed/dismissed on the watch.
P4 - Combining all of the above does give an extremely effective way to give yourself a high priority reminder that won't bother people around you and certainly won't be missed:
P4A - Why you won't bother the people around you: because it starts very soft and vibrates your wrist. You'll be the first to notice it AND you can dismiss it quickly from your watch rather than fumbling to find your phone.
P4B - Why you won't miss it: If for some reason you're distracted, it'll keep getting louder and louder and louder...as loud as it takes for you to notice it (setting controls max loudness).

====== CONS ===================
C1 - When the alarm sounds and display appears, the label/name that I assigned is difficult to read on the watch because it is small white text with half of it on a very-light-blue background.
C2 - When alarm sounds, there are three different possible displays, depending on the context:
C2A - Watch has snooze icon on the right and dismiss icon on the left (swipe to activate)
C2B - Phone (when alarms from locked condition) has snooze icon on the left and dismiss icon on the right (swipe to activate)
C2C - Phone (when alarms with screen on) has snooze icon on the left and dismiss icon on the right (tap to activate rather than swipe)
C2 Discussion - The difference C2A vs C2B is not as big as it sounds. Swipe direction is the same. It is a matter of whether they are labeling the beginning of the swipe (watch) or the end of the swipe (phone... swipe always begins in the middle of the screen on phone). For a given action, the finger begins at different sides of the phone for c2a than c2c! There are certainly enough visual cues that any one interface alone is simple. But why three slightly different interfaces for the exact same function? The last thing people want when waking up bleary eyed and groggy is to dismiss when they thought they were snoozing. I'm pretty sure after studying it that I'll be ok (it's easy to remember that swipe right means dismiss, just like for notifications), but I think they should settle on one interface for that critical function.
C3 - When you launch the app on phone you go to a clock screen. Requires an additional swipe to get to the alarm screen. Why not take me directly to the alarm (who would ever need to open an app to see a clock).
C4 - Deleted.
C5 - Any alarm that you set on the watch does not activate the phone alarm (lives on the watch only). This is a disadvantage for two reasons:
C5A - It would be convenient to set a "real" (phone) alarm from the watch, including voice command.
C5B - It could be another "gotcha" for someone new to this app ...seeing that the alarms seem integrated and are shared from phone to watch ...incorrectly assumes that they are also shared from watch to phone (imagine setting your wakeup alarm from the watch and then taking the watch off for charging).
C6 - When setting a weekly alarm, you have to tap every day that the alarm doesn't sound (rather than tapping the days the alarm does sound). A little counterintuitive if you ask me.

The con's are not meant to be overly negative, I'm just talking through the different things that struck me as I tried out the app...

Overall I like it and I'm going to use it instead of the stock alarm app. Try for yourself and post what you think.

 

[electricpete]

The google clock app gives an advance notification 2 hours before the alarm time.

That's a handy feature for the phone…. we can recognize exactly what the notification is from the icon.

But I was annoyed to see that same 2-hours-in-advance notification on my watch. So I blocked the "clock" app notifications in android wear settings. Retested and it and verified that it blocks the early notification but doesn't affect the alarm function on the watch when the alarm time comes.

 

[Clementine_3]

Thanks for trying that @electricpete

I was on vacation when I noticed that and didn't want to mess my alarms up. I'll be turning it off

 

[electricpete]

I had the same hesitance as you, so I investigated carefully before transitioning away from the familiar comfort of the Samsung alarm app that I've used for 5 years.

Here is help for the google clock app (it's hard to find...you've got to search for nexus alarm clock)
https://support.google.com/nexus/answer/2840926?hl=en

Below are screen photos which indicate the three interfaces I mentioned above (click for full size image):

• AlarmAfterPhoneScreenOff.jpg illustrates C2A and C2B (these two are labeled opposite but actually swipe in the same direction)
  
  
  
• AlarmWithPhoneScreenOn.jpg illustrates C2A and C2C
  

 

[JimSmith94]

Nice write up. I was swiping in the wrong direction to dismiss an alarm on my watch, so I agree that the watch interface is confusing.

For C3, Xposed has a module to force the clock app to open to the alarm screen.

 

[electricpete]

Thanks. I'll see if I can find that xposed module, although I'm guessing it may be applicable to nexus only, not Samsung.

In the meantime, I'm trying to formulate a simple rule to deal with the three screens mentioned.

If it was only screen C2A and C2B, I'd say:
Ignore the screen and just use the same convention as notifications (swipe right to dismiss.. which means the other direction is snooze).
BUT, we can't ignore the screen when we throw C2C into the mix…

….So I have to refine the simple rule a little bit:
Look at the screen to see whether a swipe or a tap is requested.

• If a swipe is requested then ignore the depicted direction and just follow the same covention as notifications described above.
• If a tap is requested, then look at the screen to decide which button to tap.

=============================

For ex-Samsung alarm users only, there is one more thing I need to mention:

There is a feature missing from google clock that Samsung had. Samsung always allowed you to set the maximum number of snoozes.
After that number of snoozes occurs, you are only presented with a dismiss button (no snooze option), and then you know it's time to get up.

I came to rely on that feature. The decision on whether to hit snooze or dismiss was made the night before, not in the morning. I didn't have to look at the time in the morning… just just keep hitting snooze until it's no longer an option.

Since the option is not present in google clock, there is an accident waiting to happen for people like me who are used to the Samsung feature. If I fall into my old routine and keep hitting snooze and waiting (incorrectly) for that snooze option to disappear, I'll oversleep. In the light of day, it seems obvious that I just have to pay attention to the time instead of the presence/absence of a snooze option. But in the wee hours of the morning, old habits die hard.

 

[electricpete]

WARNING-SELF SERVING RAMBLE AHEAD *

For ex-Samsung alarm users only, there is one more thing I need to mention:

There is a feature missing from google clock that Samsung had. Samsung always allowed you to set the maximum number of snoozes.
After that number of snoozes occurs, you are only presented with a dismiss button (no snooze option), and then you know it's time to get up.

I came to rely on that feature. The decision on whether to hit snooze or dismiss was made the night before, not in the morning. I didn't have to look at the time in the morning… just just keep hitting snooze until it's no longer an option.

Since the option is not present in google clock, there is an accident waiting to happen for people like me who are used to the Samsung feature. If I fall into my old routine and keep hitting snooze and waiting (incorrectly) for that snooze option to disappear, I'll oversleep. In the light of day, it seems obvious that I just have to pay attention to the time instead of the presence/absence of a snooze option. But in the wee hours of the morning, old habits die hard.

To address the above concern, I'm going to try to switch between apps depending on the purpose:
* the Samsung clock alarm for my wakeups (to take advantage of the limited snoozes that I'm used to)
* the Google clock alarm for my daytime high-priority reminders (to take advantage of watch integration and increasing volume feature).

The Samsung alarm of course doesn't vibrate the watch, but watch is not on my wrist in bed anyway.

The Samsung alarm has the same swipe direction convention as google clock (swipe right to dismiss, left to snooze), so no confusion there.

There is potential confusion from item C6 - when creating a new weekly alarm the google clock taps to deselect the day while Samsung taps to select the day (advantage Samsung, what was google thinking). I think I'm safe as long as I double-check the toast message "alarm set for XX days YY hours from now" as confirmation that the I've actually managed to set the alarm that I really intended.

There is the inconvenience of having to go to two different places to set my alarms and read my upcoming alarms. But I do have already on my quick toggle bar from "notification toggle" app a display of my next alarm time, which seems to read correctly regardless of which app created the alarm.

*This has been a little bit of a ramble for me. It's helpful for me to record my thoughts in detail so I can look back on them later. It's probably not so helpful to others, but who knows maybe someone else has similar situation to me.

 

[electricpete]

One more thing...

The watch/phone/alarm gives me a new way to manage a short task (let's say < 1 hour) that has a strict/important schedule: I can set an alarm for the intended start time of the task, and then just keep snoozing until I finish the task. That keeps me on track from start to finish… less possibility to get detoured during the task and forget to come back to finish it.

In the old days (before a watch), I didn't feel comfortable snoozing because that would irritate the people around me. But now the vib plus slowly increasing volume gets my attention and I can swipe snooze on my watch quickly before it gets loud enough for anyone else to even notice. Also, there's something about the combination of vib plus slowly increasing soft noise together that gets my attention faster than either one alone. I'm liking it.

 

[electricpete]

As I mentioned, this slowly-increasing alarm accompanied by watch vib seems useful to me for day-time high-priority reminders since it gets your attention reliably without bothering anyone around you.

But I (like most people) don’t want to manage/track my actions/tasks in my alarm app… I already have another action management app that does that very well – in my case “gtasks" which generates a notification when action come due. (It also does a lot more of course...typical action management functions like categorize my action, view them sorted in due-date order). Adding another place (alarm app) to track actions is not good... the fewer places you have to go to manage your actions, the better.

If you have Tasker and an action-tracking app (like gtasks) that generates notification reminders, then you can easily add this alarm feature into whatever action you want tracked, right in your action-tracking app. Simply include a pre-selected keyword (in my case “ruby”) in the title or body of the action… which will end up showing in the notification. Tasker will search the title and body of all arriving notifications from the specified action-tracking app (example gtasks) for the specific keyword (ruby) and if it finds the keyword then it will set an alarm for approx one minute after the time that it sees the notification. The alarm will be labeled with the title and text of the notification (so you know what the alarm is reminding you about). You can track it to completion by snoozing (without fear of annoying the people around you).

But now you have double tracking.. the notification (which you may or may not notice) shows up first, and then the alarm a minute later. As written below, tasker will clear the notification after one minute (which is about the same time that the alarm goes off) if you haven’t cleared it already. (Note I wait a minute to clear the notification because it would be very annoying if you respond to vib / chime immediately when it happens, and there’s nothing there until a minute later when the alarm goes off). As written, you don't have to be bothered dismissing the notification if you didn't see it when it first occurred. But if you'd prefer to leave the notification active until you yourself clear it (rather than having tasker clear it), then delete the last two steps listed below.

If you've got Tasker and want to give it a try, click the spoiler below for the details:

Spoiler

Note 1 – this profile uses the free add-in “notification listener” which has no permissions other than notifications (so it cannot share your private notification info with anyone else)

Note 2- I’d recommend setting collision handling to “run both together” in case two alarms are set at the exact same time. But safest bet is to avoid setting two high-priority (ruby) tasks for the same time.

Note 3 - Ruby is the keyword. Case insenstiive
But why Ruby?

Note 3a - It's not a word I use often, so not likely to be inadvertantly included in my tasks
Note 3b - It is a multi-syllable word -> easier for voice recognition to reliably recognize during voice input
Note 3c - only four letters -> doesn't take up too much space in your reminder if you choose to include it in the title (so you can easily recognize tasks that have alarm added)
Note 3d - onyx would be another good choice.​

Profile: RubyAlarmProfile

Event: Notification Listener [ Configuration: Posted, GTasks, GTasks Key, Keep ]​

Enter: RubyAlarmProfTask

Collision Handling: Run Both Tasks Together
A1: Variable Set [ Name:%AlarmInfo To:%nltitle - %nltext Do Maths:Off Append:Off ]
A2: If [ %AlarmInfo !~ *ruby* ]

A3: Stop [ With Error:Off Task: ]​

A4: End If
<If continue beyond this point, the notif contains the keyword, set an alarm...>
<Alarm time 70 sec than current time avoids setting alarm for current minute, which rolls to 24 hours later>
A5: Variable Set [ Name:%alarmtime To:%TIMES + 70 Do Maths:On Append:Off ]
A6: Variable Convert [ Name:%alarmtime Function:Seconds to Date Time Store Result In: ]
A7: Variable Section [ Name:%alarmtime From:12 Length:2 Adapt To Fit:Off Store Result In:%alarmhours ]
A8: Variable Section [ Name:%alarmtime From:15 Length:2 Adapt To Fit:Off Store Result In:%alarmminutes ]
A9: Set Alarm [ Hours:%alarmhours Minutes:%alarmminutes Message:%AlarmInfo Confirm:Off ]
<Remove these last two actions A10-11 if you don't want tasker to remove the notification>
A10: Wait [ MS:0 Seconds:10 Minutes:1 Hours:0 Days:0 ]
A11: Cancel notifications [ Configuration:Cancel a notification,%nlkey, Package:com.balda.notificationlistener Name:Cancel notifications Timeout (Seconds):0 ]​

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