# An alarm that rings through Silent Mode

The notification-based alarm went quiet under Focus. A system-level alarm with protected background audio that keeps ringing until the task is done; then a trademark dispute and a rename.

By: Necati Doğrul · 2026-09-13 · https://necatidogrul.dev/en/work/wakora · ios, audio, product

## Problem

Heavy sleepers are late not because they cannot hear the alarm but because they dismiss it half asleep. Wakora's idea was simple: the alarm must not stop until a task is completed. Arithmetic, shaking the phone, walking steps, scanning a barcode left in another room.

Two things broke in the first release. The alarm was built on local notifications, so with Silent Mode or Focus on, the sound was muted; the alarm "fired" but the phone stayed quiet. And when the user swiped the app away, everything scheduled went with it.

## Decisions

- **System-level alarm plus protected background audio.** At alarm time the app takes the audio session and does not release it until the task is done. Silent Mode and Focus do not cut it.
- **Layered fallback.** If iOS terminates the app, a notification chain fires anyway, and a backup alarm is scheduled a few minutes after the main one. If scheduling was ever interrupted, the app says so inside.
- **Snooze is not banned, it is priced.** Each snooze demands a longer task than the last, with a daily cap. Banning it pushed people to delete the app.
- **A check two minutes after dismissal.** "Still up?" catches going back to bed instead of silently rewarding it.

## Outcome

20 missions, 8 of which cannot be done in bed. 11 store languages. Rewriting onboarding as a persuasion sequence took day-one return from 16% to 30%, measured with funnel counters rather than guessed.

In August 2026 a trademark dispute arrived: the app had shipped as "WakeGuard". I chose a rename over an appeal; it became Wakora, subscriptions and streaks carried over, store copy and the website changed the same day. Lesson: check the trademark database before the keyword tool.

There was also a privacy rejection: the photo-match mission uses Vision, so Apple required a separate "Face data" section in the privacy policy. Updated, passed in one round.

Wakora is the portfolio's strongest organic signal today, and the app where I learned everything else: paywall placement, trial length, collecting ratings, when ads burn money and when they convert.

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Necati Doğrul · https://necatidogrul.dev