Alarm mission
Brush Your Teeth
Your alarm goes quiet and starts listening, and it stays unfinished until it has heard about thirty seconds of real brushing.
Free on the App Store. Every mission is free, on every plan.
How it works
- 1
Add Brush Your Teeth to your alarm. There is no number to pick on this one.
- 2
When it rings, the alarm falls silent so the microphone can hear, and you go and brush.
- 3
The ring fills while it recognises brushing. Reach thirty seconds and the mission is done.
You set About 30 seconds of brushing sounds, counted cumulatively
Why it works
This is the only mission that leaves you with something done. Everything else proves you are awake and then evaporates. This one ends with clean teeth and you standing at a sink, which is about as far into the morning as an alarm can reasonably carry you.
The listening part is stranger than it sounds. A microphone cannot hear a toothbrush over a ringing phone, so the alarm silences itself for ninety seconds and hands the bathroom to you. During that window your phone runs Apple’s on device sound classifier. It knows toothbrush and electric toothbrush by name, and it also recognises the family of noises real brushing makes, a small motor or a fast scratchy scrub. It checks about twice a second and only credits time when it is fairly confident. Volume gets you nothing, which is why a running tap fills no part of the ring.
Progress adds up rather than needing to be continuous, so rinsing, spitting and losing thirty seconds to staring at your own face all cost you nothing. The catch is that quiet window. Ninety seconds is generous for a thirty second gate, but wander off and the alarm comes back at full volume. The mission can buy one more minute of silence, and only if you have actually been brushing, so walking away never earns you an extension for walking away.
Who it’s for
If your mornings fall apart in the gap between switching the alarm off and doing the first real thing, this closes that gap by making the first real thing mandatory. It suits the pattern where you are technically up and then lose twenty minutes standing in a doorway. It is quiet too, which matters more than it should when someone else in the flat is still asleep. Enable it alongside a few others and some mornings simply begin at the sink.
FAQ
Brush Your Teeth, answered.
Does it work with an electric toothbrush?
Yes, both kinds work. Electric brushes tend to be recognised as a motor sound and manual brushing as a scrubbing sound, and either one fills the ring.
Can I cheat by running the tap?
No. It is not listening for volume, it is classifying the sound, so a loud bathroom, a shower or a hairdryer fills nothing at all. If you find something that scrubs convincingly enough to fool it, you were standing at a sink scrubbing something, so we call that a draw.
Is my microphone recording me?
No. Audio is analysed live on your phone and thrown away. Nothing is written to disk, nothing is uploaded, and the only thing kept is a number counting up.
What if I stop halfway through?
Nothing is lost. The thirty seconds add up rather than needing to be continuous, so spitting, rinsing and staring into the middle distance are all fine. The alarm does have a quiet window though, and if you take too long it starts ringing again.
See other missions
Pick as many as you like.
When the alarm rings, one of the missions you picked fires, chosen at random. Finish it and the alarm stops on the spot.
Tomorrow morning, don't do it alone.
Set your first alarm tonight. Solo alarms and all 15 missions are free.
