Questions about Roosta

A mission alarm clock is an alarm that cannot be dismissed with a single tap. It keeps ringing until you complete a short task — solving arithmetic, walking a set number of steps, or photographing an object. The task is what proves you are genuinely awake rather than acting on autopilot.

The built-in alarm stops when you tap it, and tapping is something a half-asleep person can do without forming a memory of it. Roosta replaces that tap with a mission that requires attention or movement, and adds streaks, snooze limits and mission variety on top.

Roosta ships 17 missions across four families: cognitive (Math, Sequence, Match pairs, Typing), physical (Shake, Steps, Squats, Push-ups), camera (Object Hunt, Pet Hunt, Sky Photo, Nature Hunt, Touch Grass, Scan a code) and mindful (Affirmation, Bible verse), plus a Random option that rotates between them.

If you snooze but remember doing it, start with Math. If you turn alarms off with no memory of it at all, start with Steps — getting vertical is the only thing that reliably works for that. Shake is the gentlest introduction but rarely a long-term answer.

Roosta is available for iOS and Android. It is built for phones — there is no tablet layout and no smartwatch app yet.

Every mission has a timeout, and an escape hatch opens after a delay you configure — regardless of how the mission is going. You are never locked out of your own phone. A failed mission returns you to a ringing alarm rather than silently switching it off.

It is designed not to. The escape hatch means you can always dismiss the alarm once its delay has passed, and you choose that delay in advance. Friction is the goal of a mission alarm; entrapment is a support ticket and a one-star review.

Yes. Alarms are registered with the operating system when you save them, so they fire whether or not the app is running. Swiping the app away, restarting the phone, or a battery saver suspending background work does not cancel a scheduled alarm.

The most common causes are ringer volume, audio routed to a Bluetooth device, an alarm saved for the wrong AM or PM, and on Android manufacturer battery optimisation. Our help centre walks through every cause in the order worth checking.

Yes. Roosta uses the system alarm audio stream on both platforms, which is separate from the ringer and is designed to sound through silent mode and Do Not Disturb.

No. Camera missions analyse the live frame on your device and discard it immediately. Nothing is written to storage and nothing is uploaded. This is an architectural constraint in the app, not only a line in a privacy policy.

Yes. Nothing on the alarm path requires a network — not scheduling, not the sounds, and not the camera missions, because recognition runs on-device. Roosta works in airplane mode, with no signal and with no SIM.

No. Roosta does not require an account, an email address or a sign-in. Your alarms, streaks and wake history are stored on your device.

Anonymous product analytics about which features are used, so we can tell which missions actually work. No camera frames, no audio recordings, no location and no personal identifiers. The security page lists precisely what leaves the device.

Yes. The free tier includes unlimited alarms, all 21 alarm sounds, streaks and a set of cognitive and physical missions, with no advertising and no time limit. Roosta Premium is optional and unlocks the full mission catalog.

No, on any plan. An advert standing between a person and a silent alarm at 6am is a genuinely bad experience, and it would also break the promise that the alarm path never needs a network. Roosta is funded by subscriptions instead.

They keep working. An alarm using a Premium-only mission falls back to a free mission rather than failing to ring. An alarm that silently stops working because a subscription lapsed would be an unacceptable failure.