SleepBot includes a “smart alarm” feature which has been failing on Android 6.x “Marshmallow” due to “Doze” mode. What's the workaround?

Question

Background

SleepBot is a freeware sleep-tracking app. It includes a "smart alarm" feature which claims to help prevent early-morning grogginess and sleep inertia.

There are other competing free apps, but they aren't great. There's also Sleep as Android, which is a very good app; but it's trialware, and it costs US$4 to remove the restrictions after the trial ends.

The problem

Various individuals, such as this one and this one, complain of problems with SleepBot's alarm functionality when using Android 6.x "Marshmallow". They tend to complain about problems regarding SleepBot's smart alarms never ringing at all, or about problems with the alarms' snooze function.

My questions

I don't own any Android 6.x device. But I wonder:

• Does Android 6.x "Marshmallow" truly cause problems with SleepBot?

• Are any of these problems due to "Doze" mode?

• Is there any workaround for any of these problems?

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_{Possibly related: "Alarm clocks aren't working on Android 6".}

Answer 1

You should be able to turn off App Optimization. Go to settings -> apps -> click the gear at the top right -> then click Battery Optimization. Add the app to "Not Optimized."

Answer 2

I wanted to add this as a comment to the accepted answer but I didn't have enough reputation.

I am using a Galaxy Note 5 and have upgraded to Android 6.0.1 "Marshmallow". I am experiencing the same problem. I have since:

• uninstalled and reinstalled SleepBot on Marshmallow.
• added SleepBot as a "Disabled" app in App Optimisation.

These are my observations:

• My movement-tracking graphs show nothing but a flat line (before I upgraded, the graphs were very dynamic).
• Smart alarms or normal alarms will not fire within the smart window or on the instructed time respectively. Only when I hit the "Home" key to turn on the screen, the alarm will fire.
• They will, eventually, go off without waking up the phone by hitting the "Home" key. For example, the smart window is 6:45 - 7:15, the alarm went off at 7:27.

It may be noteworthy that all my testing has been while the device is in flight mode (because I keep my phone under my pillow and don't want the radios on while it is near my head for 7ish hours :) ).

Answer 3

I've experienced similar problems on my Samsung Galaxy S7 running Android 7.0 where the SleepBot alarm hasn't gone off in the morning. I don't use it in smart alarm mode, for the record. When I've picked my phone up and activated it (after thoroughly oversleeping - thanks so much) the alarm has gone off immediately. The problem has been intermittent, and I haven't really noticed a pattern. I'll often keep my phone under my pillow, but also sometimes next to me or on the nightstand. I haven't noticed if there's a correlation between the phone's location and whether or not the alarm has gone off as expected. I've restarted the phone more than once in the time I've experienced these issues.

I looked at the phone's sound settings today, and I have a theory that I've been causing the problem. At the end of the sound settings there's an Easy mute option, which when activated will mute incoming calls and alarms by putting your hand over the screen or turning the phone face down. I have certainly left my phone upside down some nights, although I don't imagine I've slept with my hand on top of the screen. Either way I turned the feature off, so here's hoping that'll fix it.

Answer 4

I have also noticed this, on a galaxy S6 running android 7. However, I have additionally linked it to the fact if the phone is plugged/charging it never occurs. If the phone is running on battery, then it occurs nearly 100%, exactly as user214423 describes. I am going to attempt to disable the App Power Monitor settings, i.e. add it to the exclude list. This didn't happen when the phone was new, it is definitely an issue with either later versions of SleepBot or later versions of Android.