What exactly does the "Alarm Sound Start" setting do?

Hello,

I’m puzzled by this setting. Its options are from 0 to 24 minutes.

If the alarm time is set to 6 am for example, and I set the “Alarm Sound Start” setting to 6 minutes, does that mean the alarm sound starts at 6:06 am?

And what if I set the “Gentle volume increase” to 3 mins, is full volume achieved at 6:09 am?

What would be really useful in the documentation is a diagram showing an example timeline of an alarm and where these settings would kick in.

Thanks!

Hi @swarly, seems you’re not confused at all! The option does exactly what you say, even regarding the Gentle volume increase.
I’ll add it to the docs for reference.

Thanks @jiri-urbandroid

Ha, no, I was/am definitely confused. Those were just guesses on my part. I guess I don’t understand the use case for the ‘alarm sound start’ option if the alarm time is already set.

Now let’s make it even more confusing: what if the ‘smart alarm’ option is set to 20 mins? When do these options kick in?

The emphasis is on “sound” here. You can set vibration start, light start (if you use smartlight), wearable vibration start (if you use wearable) and phone sound start all independently.

So using this alarm sound start option, when the alarm starts, you can for example let the phone first vibrate for 10 minutes and then let the sound kick in gently. While the phone is vibrating, your smartlight will also start to light up gradually.

Regarding the smart alarm question - the smart alarm marks the “hard start”. So when smart alarm is triggered (for example 17 minutes before your set time), that would be time zero.
If you have alarm sound start set for 10 minutes, the alarm sound will start in time zero + 10 minutes (so 7 minutes before your set time).