Alarm for heavy sleepers! Requires steps to turn off

[srmercer88]

PROBLEM: There is no alarm that will help heavy sleepers ACTUALLY get out of bed.

SOLUTION: We are wearing a Fitbit! Make the user get up and walk (where the tracker counts a preset number of steps... i.e. 5 or 10) to disable the alarm vibrations!

Of course this can be an optional feature placed into the mobile application and Online, but I know that this would be an extremely useful feature for people like myself! 

Moderator edit: edit title for clarity & Labels

[SantiR]

@srmercer88 This is a great idea! I am a heavy sleeper too and sometimes I don't feel the vibration, or if I feel it, I just turn it off and get back to sleep. What I love is the idea about having to get out of the bed and walk 10 steps to turn the alarm off haha, it's just great. We are actually wearing a Fitbit and that will for sure wake anybody up. Of course it will have to be an optional feature. Hopefully we will see this implemented in the nearest future, so let's keep voting for this!

[keldastar]

Agreed! I sleep through the alarm or turn it off in my sleep without knowing and oversleep!

[kbeik8]

I also find the vibration isn't very effective at waking me up since it's not on for long so I love the idea that it would vibrate until I got up and walked a certain number of steps.

[OKKFran]

For some people, waking up on the first alarm is tough. For most waking up to hit the gym or go for a run is a challenge by itself.
To encourage users to get off the couch or out of bed and get active, an option for an alarm should be an feature where the user has to walk a certain amount of steps to turn off the alarm. Maybe an option as to how many steps they want to do.

Ex. Alarm goes off at 7:00am. You get up and out of bed and walk 25 steps. After the steps are completes a notification on the watch says something followed by Alarm off.

[ShadowPerson11]

This is similar to another post requiring steps to turn the alarm off, but it differs enough that I would like for it to be seen.  

My Charge HR alarm often wakes me up, but rarely gets me out of bed. The other post suggests an option to take a certain number of steps to turn it off, which is a fantastic idea and I am in full support of it.  My problem is that I would go to the bathroom or something and then go right back to bed.  For those of us with the Heart Rate tracking option, I think it would be really helpful if we had to raise our heart rates to a certain number for it to shut off.  Doing jumping jacks in the morning helps me stay up, but I rarely have the motivation to actually do them, and this would change that.  

Additionally, the original post includes a comment by a moderator saying that it would have to be optional, and I would like to add onto that with a suggestion that either of these be optional for each alarm.  I have alarms to get me out of bed, but also alarms set to remind me that I have class in 15 minutes in case I get ensconced in a book or something.  

[cassjan88]

I would LOVE to have this feature. It would really help me get out of bed on time and be more productive overall. The vibration does wake me up but I just go right back to sleep when it's over. Having to get up and walk to make it shop would be incredibly helpful.

[radorodopski]

Steps can be misinterpreted, but I think the tracker should keep monitoring if the user is sleeping and repeat the alarm again until maybe at least 20 steps have been made. If in the next minute or so the user keeps moving actively (meaning he's definitely not asleep) the alarm can be finally stopped from repeating.

[windkew]

Agreed I can too easily turn off the alarm by quickly taping the side button on my charger HR. I would much rather have the option to use that as a snooze button and then have to go into the app to turn off the alarm or walk around as mentioned.

-Kyle

[Neefer]

I think it should be based on raising your heart rate a certain amount, instead of steps taken.

(I can VERY easily get up, stagger to the bathroom and back with one eye barely open, then crawl back in bed and sleep for several more hours! Presumably actually raising my heart rate a certain amount would be a far more accurrate "proof of awakeness" than just taking the 30 or so steps round-trip. 🙂

[SunsetRunner]

Hi, I seen a post similar to this before but I would like to give my input.
I think that Fitbits with silent alarms should have a feature so the alarm will only turn off after you walk a certain amount of steps. The amount of steps would be set in the Fitbit app. This feature would force people to get out of bed and stay awake. The app "Step Out Of Bed! Smart alarm clock to get awake..." uses this feature but I think it would be more effectively used with a Fitbit.
-Thanks Jonathan

Moderator edit: Labels.

[NicholasS]

Fitbit's alarm shouldn't go off until you walk a few steps in the morning. If it goes off at 7am, maybe take 200 steps to wake you up. I would find this much more useful than it just buzzing for 20 seconds

[PreetP]

I am not a morning person and I always have hard time waking up and keep on missing gym. I wanted to see if you guys thought of a feature to put wake up alerts that will require the user to take few steps before the alert stops. Like make user walk 20 steps and then the vibrator stop. It can be something that user can enable or disable. I think this would be useful for many users. Thanks much.

[Kiernla]

I need this! My Alta stops vibrating after just a few seconds so it's absolutely useless as an alarm. Continuing until I actually stand up would be very useful!

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[jaclin]

It needs to be more than 10.  I would just walk the 10 steps and go back to bed.

[sydseratte]

I would love the alarm to keep vibrating until I take approximately 100 steps in the morning - would help me get out of bed.  I'm sure others would benefit from this feature.  Thanks for your consideration.

[john.me.tz]

I want to second this request and add an addition option to reach an "active" heartrate before disabling the alarm for any of the HR models (in my case the Charge HR). I try and sometimes succeed with doing some quick exercises immediately upon waking up, and when I do it always makes for a tremendous start to my day. However, a large chunk of the time I will simply dismiss the alarm and go back to bed.

In my case some number of steps would mean walking many laps of my bachelor apartment or heading outside in my PJ's. Instead, doing a minute or so of aerobics is a lot less tedious/embarrassing. 

[Shaniceeb]

Wake up alarms should vibrate until fitbit starts to track a certain amount of steps, Per say aprox 20-30 steps to ensure that the fit bit user has gotten out of bed and has started their day 

[GreysAnatomy]

Another idea for a wakeup mechanism is to have counter-rotating numbers on the upper and lower parts of the screen and only turn off of the alarm when the button is pressed when those numbers match.

[Seejaynix]

I want my alarm to keep going off with increasing intensity until it senses I’ve actually gotten out of bed and taken a few steps. 

[powerc7]

Give an option to set alarm to a snooze free settings that won’t turn off the alarm until you’ve taken ~50 steps. (That should get most people to the coffee maker.)

This should help the “Not a Morning person” members to get out of bed on time. 

[greenwriterling]

I am a very heavy sleeper and started dismissing my fitbit's silent alarm in my sleep, just a couple days after starting to use the feature. I think it would be immensely helpful to a lot of similarly heavy sleepers to have an option where the alarm will only stop buzzing if your Fitbit senses you have gotten out of bed and started walking around, say at least 100 steps. I would never have to set multiple alarms again in my life!

[YojanaFitbit]

Hi @greenwriterling, thanks for taking the time to share why you would like to see this option on your Fitbit. This feature suggestion already exists, so I’ve moved your post here. This is not currently planned at this moment. Learn more about how Fitbit decides what suggestions get released in our FAQs. I hope to see you around.

[Ryno_23]

Allow users the ability to configure an alarm so the only way to dismiss it is to log X amount of steps.

[YojanaFitbit]

Hi @Ryno_23, thanks for taking the time to share this suggestion about adding an alarm for heavy sleepers that requires steps to turn off. This feature suggestion already exists, so I’ve moved your post here. Click on the thumbs-up to show your support. 

While we don’t currently have plans to release this feature, we always appreciate the passion and creativity that comes out of this Community. Since we know this idea is important to many of you, we have left voting open to continue tracking interest and will post another update if anything changes. To learn more about how Fitbit decides which suggestions get developed, visit our FAQs.

I hope to see you around.