About ByeBed

Last updated: October 15, 2026

The snooze problem

ByeBed was built by a chronic snoozer who was tired of being late. Every alarm app on the market gave the same answer: more friction. A louder ring. A math problem. A QR code on the bathroom mirror.

None of it worked. Because a half-asleep brain is a problem-solver. It finds the cancel button. It guesses the multiple-choice math. It memorizes where the QR code is. It wants to go back to sleep, and given any out, it will take it.

What changed in 2025

In June 2025, Apple announced AlarmKit, a new framework for system-level alarms that shipped with iOS 26 that September. For the first time, a third-party app could schedule a real system alarm: one that rings on silent mode and through Do Not Disturb, keeps ringing after the app is closed, and can send you straight into the app from the alarm screen.

ByeBed is built entirely on AlarmKit. Not bolted on. Not as a fallback. The whole product is designed around one rule: no snooze. Tapping Stop opens your mission, and if you don't finish it, ByeBed rings again, 10 more times over the next 15 minutes. Apart from 2 emergency skips a month, completing the mission is the only way to stop the re-rings.

Why the missions are different

We chose missions specifically designed to defeat the half-asleep brain:

• Typed math, not multiple choice. You have to write the answer on a numeric keypad. No guessing.
• Push-ups counted by the front camera, using Apple Vision body pose detection. Real reps. No motion-fakes.
• Photo of the sky, verified by Google Gemini image recognition. You have to actually find a window.
• 14 mission types total, so the brain never builds a shortcut against any single one.

How we think about privacy

Your alarms, settings and wake-up stats live on your device. The push-up counting, the shake detection, the math and the mini-games all run locally. We don't have an account system because we don't need one. If you uninstall ByeBed, everything stored on your phone is gone the moment the app is removed.

Some things do leave your phone. The photo missions and the drawing mission send the image through our server to Google Gemini once per check, to see whether it matches the prompt; we don't store it and we never look at it. The app also loads its settings from our configuration server, uses RevenueCat for subscriptions, PostHog for product analytics, and AppsFlyer and TikTok to measure our ad campaigns. When you start a trial or subscribe, the developer gets a notification through Discord and Telegram with your plan and onboarding answers. Full details on the privacy page.

The team

ByeBed is built and operated by Louis Hubert Cottineau, an indie iOS developer based in Tbilisi, Georgia. The app is shaped by feedback from App Store reviews and support emails.

If you have feedback, a bug, or a mission idea, we read every email at [email protected]. See the contact page for response times and the kinds of things we can help with.

What's next

Short term: more mission types calibrated for different sleep profiles (light vs heavy sleepers, morning vs night chronotypes). Better push-up accuracy. More natural photo prompts.

Long term: ByeBed exists to make the snooze button feel impossible. Everything we ship is judged on whether it makes "just one more minute" harder than getting out of bed.