We’re pleased to announce that we’ve just submitted our latest app, Playlist Alarm Clock (or P.A.C for short), to the App Store.
Playlist Alarm Clock lets you create two playlists of songs from your iPhone or iPod touch – one to go to sleep with and one to wake up with.
P.A.C. go to sleep and wake up listening to your favorite tunes
Playlist Alarm Clock lets you create two playlists of songs from your iPhone or iPod touch – one to go to sleep with and one to wake up with.
You can build your own playlists within P.A.C. by adding individual songs but it’s probably easier to create 2 new playlists in iTunes – something nice & relaxing to lull you off to sleep and something a little bit more energetic to wake you with a smile. Then you can easily add all the songs in one go.
Just tap on the Sleep or Wake areas of the screen and the panels will slide open, switching those functions on and allowing you to set up your playlists and configure your options.
Sleep: choose your playlist then decide how long it will take for the music to fade out. You can choose as many songs as you like. If you only choose a few songs to listen to, P.A.C will simply repeat them as required for the duration of the time you’ve specified.
The progress bar shows at a glance the time period you’ve chosen and how far through it you are.
Wake: set the time you want to wake up and how long you want the music to fade in for this time in seconds rather than minutes). You can also choose to activate the snooze function.
You can use P.A.C however you like: to listen to music as you go to sleep and/or as an alarm clock or just a night stand clock. It’s easy to see which features are turned on or off at a glance.
Note: P.A.C doesn’t make copies of your songs – it just references them in your iPod library, so if you delete the songs from your phone, P.A.C won’t be able to find them. That’s why it’s a good idea to create a couple of playlists specially for P.A.C.
Coming soon:
Automatic screen dimming feature and night stand functions.
Just tap on the Sleep or Wake areas of the screen and the panels will slide open (with a great little sound effect), switching those functions on and allowing you to set up your playlists and configure your options.
It's easy to see which options are on or off
We’ll let you know as soon as it goes live – let’s hope it’s faster than our other apps of late…
Chilli X Blog 
July 1, 2009 at 2:10 pm |
Oh this is SWEET!
July 1, 2009 at 2:25 pm |
Thanks Jerry
Let’s hope see fit to get it live quickly – everything else is taking a painfully long time.
July 17, 2009 at 5:20 pm |
very nice app.
but my problem is: I can only add a playlist or new songs, but I did not find any possibilty to edit or delete the current playlist.
July 17, 2009 at 5:45 pm |
Hi lutzoebele
at the moment there’s no way of editing the playlists from within P.A.C itself. You can delete a playlist just by choosing some more songs – the new ones will overwrite the existing ones.
The whole method of choosing and managing songs is a bit clunky in OS 3.0 which is why we recommend you set up a couple of playlists in iTunes. Mine are called sleep and wake (not very original I know). This way it’s easy to edit the contents of the playlists in iTunes and just add them to P.A.C in one easy go.
We’ll be looking at ways of making the whole process simpler in a future version but in the meantime, I hope this helps
July 18, 2009 at 8:54 am |
New to the iPhone and I really love this app, but… I’m having a problem with it: the volume of the music is too loud to fall asleep with it on. I don’t want to turn down the volume of the iphone and risk not hearing the music when I need to wake up. You may have a solution but it’s not apparent – – to me.
July 18, 2009 at 1:07 pm |
Hi Angie
Don’t worry – it’s not you. You can’t adjust the volume while P.A.C is playing because it has to take control of it in order to fade it down.
We’re looking at ways of getting round this with a future release and think that the best way to handle it is to check your current volume setting when you press play and fade down from that.
What do you think? We’ll work something out and issue and update as soon as we can – in the meantime you could try and pick some nice quiet chill out tunes…
July 18, 2009 at 6:09 pm |
Volume is a serious problem can you fix and release and update soon please, its too loud to go to sleep with
Thanks
July 19, 2009 at 7:41 am |
Hi Dave
We get the message! We’ll be releasing an update asap – keep checking the blog for news.
July 20, 2009 at 6:07 pm |
I know for all the music alarm apps the apps must be opened for them to work. For the p.a.c, does the screen have to remain turned on for the alarm to work? This is what I have concluded so far. Ive tried another app where it’s ok to sleep the ipod as long as the app is opened.
Thanks
July 20, 2009 at 6:30 pm |
Hi Albert
as long as your phone is on charge, you can turn the screen off (by pressing the power button) and the app runs in the background just fine until morning. The problem with the screen being off is that you have to unlock it before you can turn your alarm off in the morning.
We’re looking at ways around this issue and will issue frequent updates until everybody is happy
July 25, 2009 at 1:39 am |
PSSSSST…. Boy it would be nice to have an app for the MAC that looks this good and works this well.
Top 3 things I rely on my iPHONE for:
1: Multiple staggered alarms every morning.
2: Messaging and Mail
3: Web Surfing.
Scarily in that order…
July 25, 2009 at 5:25 pm |
When is the update coming out to FIX the Volume problem
The app just does not work right with loud volume, and would love to see this fixed and no the standard volume trick before I launch the app all the way down does not work, your app takes it and controls it no matter what I do
Thanks for a GREAT APP
July 25, 2009 at 6:58 pm |
Hi Dave
I wish I could tell you when it will be available but we’ve really got no idea 😦 Once it’s been submitted to Apple it’s out of our hands…
We submitted it on July 20th so I wouldn’t really expect it to be out yet but it shouldn’t be much longer unless they’re really backed up.
July 28, 2009 at 1:53 am |
Well it showed it was available today but when I went to download it said it was not, HMM Apple must be having problems
Cant wait for the FIX, thanks for a great app
July 28, 2009 at 7:26 am |
Hi Dave
that’s quite common in the first few hours of an app or update going live. The App Store is basically like a big website and bits of it go live in some places before others, or update before others.
It should all be OK now though. If for any reason it doesn’t show up in the updates you can just download it again from the App Store (you won’t be charged).
July 30, 2009 at 1:16 pm |
Works Great, if you could add shuffle, and maybe dim to lock screen automatically that would be cool
Thanks
July 31, 2009 at 10:02 am |
Hi Dave
Shuffle and screen coming in the next update(s) 🙂
August 8, 2009 at 10:13 am |
A few questions about this one.
1. Did I read right… On sleep if music is playing at 10% can I set it to play at 100% on wake? If not, it would be a bad wakeup alarm for the volume would be too low.
2. Could we have an option where after setting up playlists, alarm, sleep etc, we could have an option where we’d have the clock only with a few different styles to choose from as well as a landscape mode? This different screen would also require a few shortcuts i guess…
August 9, 2009 at 9:45 am |
Hi Tekoo
1. Yes – there’s separate volume controls for sleep and wake. At night you control the start volume (eg 30%) and how long it takes to fade down (in minutes). In the morning you set the final volume (eg. 80%) and how long it takes to fade up to that (in seconds)
2. We’ve been thinking about different ‘skins’ as well as a landscape mode but I think our first priority is to sort out any known issues and implement the most popular requests. Screen dimming is waiting to go live and random play will be next in line.
August 28, 2009 at 3:00 pm |
I think you are fading linearly but IMO it would be much better to fade from the current setting to 75% of the current setting in half the time, to 50% of the current setting in 3/4 of the time, and down to 25% of current in 100% then just fade to black. 🙂
Also, when is the new version going to be out. I need random songs from my playlists. otoh, could you make it always play the first song in the playlist first, then randomize after that? Or make it an option or something.
August 30, 2009 at 9:16 am |
Hi Doug
Thanks for the well thought out response. Getting your head round the volume issues is quite tricky and has given us a lot of headaches – the next version (1.4) has another crack at it.
As for random play – version 1.3 is still in review after 2 weeks now. It’s completely out of our hands but also pretty frustrating and ridiculous. These delays seem to be getting longer and longer – we can implement an new feature and submit it in a day but then Apple tkae weeks to release it – it really slows down the whole process and is unfair to developers (who want to get the latest version in the Store asap) and users who are waiting for a bug fix or new feature.
Sorry about that – rant over.
October 4, 2009 at 3:56 pm |
New problem, on Firmware 3.1 it seems that when I have your app open and click on the top button to make the screen go back or power button, it seems that the app stops playing songs, think its a 3.1 issue can you please update your app and maybe add an option to have secs or mins to lock screen so I don’t burn out my screen. You feature of dim is not enough.
Thanks for a great app prob the only one I use every single day!
October 4, 2009 at 4:39 pm |
Hi Dave
we’re aware of this one and are looking into a fix (in fact we think we’ve found it!). We’ll be uploading a new version soon as soon as we’ve finished testing it.
October 11, 2009 at 2:57 am |
Do you have to bring the app up to have the alarm set or do you just need to set the alarm?
October 12, 2009 at 1:41 pm |
Hi PhattyMatty
I guess you mean does P.A.C have to be running in order for the alarm to go off – yes, I’m afraid it does. Apple don’t let apps work unless they are actually running in the foreground (apart from their own, which isn’t really fair…)
November 1, 2009 at 8:52 pm |
When is the update to playlist alarmclock coming out still having problems with lock screen
Thank you
November 2, 2009 at 7:47 am |
Hi Dave
we’d love to know ourselves – unfortunately it’s in the hands of the Gods (well Apple’s approval team to be precise – but that feels like the same thing…)
December 19, 2009 at 3:55 am |
What happened to this great app, you never released the update to fix the problems, can you advise for us please
thanks