Sunplot vs Songbird Alarm Clock

Every seed packet says "full sun" or "part shade". Almost nobody knows which one their own garden is. Sunplot answers it with a number. Stand where the bed is, hold the phone up, and trace the roofs and trees around you with a finger. Then it walks the whole day a minute at a time and counts only the light that actually reaches that spot. WHY THE ANSWER IS DIFFERENT Other sun apps show you where the sun is. That is the easy half. The half that decides the answer is what stands in the way — the fence, the garage, the lime tree next door. Sunplot measures that skyline with the camera and subtracts it. A bed under open sky and the same bed behind a two-storey terrace are not the same bed, and the number knows it. FREE • Today's hours of direct sun at a spot, and what that means: full sun, part sun, part shade, full shade • What will grow there — 42 plants sorted into will do well, will manage, and too much sun • The map: where the sun arrives from, where it leaves, and where it is right now, with a slider through the day • The sky view: the sun's path drawn over the camera, and the skyline tracing that makes the answer real ONE PAYMENT UNLOCKS • The whole year at a spot — when full sun starts and ends, and the weeks it gets none at all • As many spots as you like — the bed by the fence and the bed by the garage answer differently • Which is better? Every spot side by side, ranked • A word before the sun arrives, so a short winter afternoon is not missed • The home screen widget One payment. No subscription, nothing renews, nothing to cancel. HONEST ABOUT WHAT IT KNOWS The compass in a phone can be badly wrong, and most sun apps draw a confident line anyway. Sunplot says so on screen when it does not trust its own reading. Before you have traced anything it labels the figure as open sky — the most the spot could get — instead of pretending to know. It is a gardening and planning tool, not a survey instrument. Check anything expensive against a professional measurement. NOTHING LEAVES THE PHONE No account, no server, no analytics, no third-party code, and nothing to sign up for. Everything is worked out on the device and stays there. It works with no signal at all. GOOD FOR Vegetable beds, borders and allotments. Balconies and window boxes. Greenhouses and cold frames. Roof pitches for solar panels. Working out which corner will take a shade planting, and which window a houseplant will survive.

What if the morning didn't have to start with a loud noise? Songbird Alarm starts forest birdsong at a volume you can barely hear, then raises it over about 15 minutes. While you sleep deeply, a quiet sound will not wake you. As your sleep grows lighter, you notice it. At the end, the clear voice of the Japanese bush warbler sings. Every sound was recorded by hand in the mountains of Gifu, Japan, with equipment that reaches frequencies a phone cannot and wooden boxes the recordist left in the hills: more than a hundred recording sessions. ■ The forest, from the moment you lie down To fall asleep to: Midnight forest, Rainy night or Bell crickets. Each plays very quietly all night; you can turn the screen off and leave the phone locked. ■ For the mornings you don't wake up There is a backup for when the quiet sound isn't enough: about 15 minutes in, the bush warbler calls clearly. If the app could not make a sound at all - force-quit, media volume at 0% - the iPhone's own alarm rings instead, with vibration. If the warbler did sound, that Backup alarm cancels itself. On the days you choose, it also wakes you on a morning you forgot to press "Good night". ■ Your mornings, written down When it began ringing, and how many minutes until you got up. Which sound you woke to most easily. Your waking time by day of the week, how it sits against sunrise, roughly how long you slept - all of it stays inside your iPhone only, never sent anywhere. Tap the Night Ring in the Wake log and the night opens large: The shape of last night. Sunset to sunrise, the time in bed and when your iPhone moved are laid over one 24-hour ring. "Previous night" goes back through earlier nights. ■ Last night's sounds - speak a night-time idea into a note A thought that comes in the night is gone by morning, and turning on a light wakes you. Say it out loud instead, clearly, eyes closed. In the morning you can read it as text - the feature the maker wanted most. Between "Good night" and the morning, the iPhone records a short piece only when a sound clearly louder than the room's usual quiet is heard - at most 60 seconds each, at most 90 minutes a night. You can listen back in the morning. A recording with a human voice in it can become text, in the language your iPhone is set to. Recordings stay inside this iPhone only and never reach the developer. You can turn the feature off in Settings. ■ Season Bookmarks - the season changes its name every five days On a night you tap "Good night", that day's season - one of the 72 seasons of the old Japanese calendar - becomes your bookmark. Over a year, 72 of them. Seeing that day's season each night, you begin to feel the small turns of the Japanese year, and notice the sky, the trees and the grass you never looked at before. Days like that are a little richer. A bookmark shows the season's name and reading, its meaning, its solar term and that night's moon. The moon is not a drawing: its shape is calculated from the moon of that night. ■ Morning birds, while you get ready After the alarm, or at any time, the morning birds can go on playing. ■ For naps 5, 15, 30 or 45 minutes. The forest begins then and wakes you over about 15 minutes. ■ Sunrise, sunset, and your day The ring around your wake-up time changes colour with that day's sunrise and sunset, and shows how long is left until each. The times are calculated to the second by astronomy (NOAA/Meeus), and how that works is written inside the app. ■ Also - Japanese, English, Spanish, German, French, Portuguese, Korean, Chinese (Traditional) - Free to use. No ads. ■ When you use it - At night, keep the phone charging beside your pillow - 70-80% device volume is a good start - For iPhone, iOS 26.5 or later This app is not a medical device and does not guarantee better sleep or health. For what is known about waking, see the notes and references inside the app. From the mountains of Gifu - may your morning begin with these voices.