HeyClock - Frequently Asked Questions

Apple is pretty picky about running things in the background, and the main goal of HeyClock is to allow you to go about your day like normal, but still receive your reminders when needed. If it required you to keep the app open in the foreground with your phone's screen on the entire time (like some other apps out there), then it wouldn't really work for the day-to-day routines.
Because of this, there are only two methods that can be used to run code in the background on your phone. The first is by playing or recording audio- you see this mostly with wake-up alarms; they record audio and then analyze it for depth-of-sleep and either wake you up when you seem more naturally-inclined to do so, or provide you a report on how restless you were during the night (or both).
That doesn't really work for HeyClock- not only is there absolutely no good justification for recording audio over the entire course of the day, but that would drain your battery in a hurry. Most people plug in their phones when they sleep, so battery drain isn't a major issue when it comes to wake-up alarms.
Because of that, HeyClock has to use the second method- monitoring the location services in the background.

Google (or Apple) Maps are allowed to run in the background for extended periods of time because they need to track your actual location. HeyClock is allowed to run because it's keeping track of the timestamp of the GPS pings; it discards the actual location data. When a ping is received, it compares the time to your saved routines, and if it's time for an alarm to go off, it does! Depending on how far away the next notification is, the GPS accuracy is internally adjusted so you receive pings more or less frequently (which is better for the phone battery).
BUT, Apple isn't exactly a fan of using system resources for things they weren't intended for- this means that HeyClock needs an actual justification to use the phone's location services. To that end, you can also define up to three locations outside of which your routines won't trigger (considered "Low Power Mode" since the GPS is effectively not monitored at all outside of those geofences, which is better for your battery).
If you use Low Power Mode and have home locations saved, this data is only saved locally in your phone's settings! It's not analyzed, uploaded, or used by us in any way. And HeyClock still isn't looking at your actual location, it's just using the built-in Apple geofencing methods that only check if you have entered or exited a location. We'll never read or use any of your personal information, location or otherwise!

iOS places apps into a suspended mode when they move to the background, only allowing them special occasional windows within which to download data (for instance, to look for software or information updates from a source on the internet). Apple's "Timer" object, which is what you would normally use to run code at a specific time, would get paused as soon as the app is suspended.
There are only a few "background modes" that are exempt from that sort of suspension, and Apple is pretty aggressive when it comes to denying apps who don't have good reasons to use them. Without the GPS method, HeyClock wouldn't be able to function at all unless you had the app open with the screen turned on over the course of your entire day, which sort of defeats its purpose.

Everybody used to be super-obsessive about closing down apps that you're not using, because they use up phone memory and battery power, but most of the recent iOS versions have actually improved on their memory- and power-management a lot, to the point where it's really not a big deal to leave several apps running in the background.
In fact, some apps (like HeyClock) depend on it! For instance, I use the Outlook app to manage my emails on my phone, and if I don't have it running in the background, I don't get notifications when new mails come in. HeyClock works the same way- as long as it's open in the background, it can keep an eye on the GPS ping timestamps, and decide whether or not it's time to trigger an alarm. If you close HeyClock down completely, then it can't do its job!
However, HeyClock will let you know if it stops processing GPS pings with a notification- if about six minutes go by without a GPS timestamp update (and you have "GPS signal lost/restored" notifications activated in the HeyClock Settings) you'll get a notification letting you know that your GPS signal has been lost, and you won't be receiving any alarms. Whether the GPS timestamps have stopped being analyzed because you entered a GPS dead zone or because you accidentally closed the app doesn't matter, so pay attention to that notification!

But, you can actually download lots of different voices on your phone, and many of them have much higher quality than the default text-to-speech voice. In the HeyClock Settings page, under the box where you select which voice you want to use, you'll see a description telling you where to go in your iPhone Settings to download more voice data (I'd mention it here, but it's in different places in different iOS versions).
In addition to downloading higher-quality versions of the voices you already have installed on your phone, you can also download different accents for your language. For instance, if your system language is set to English and you're in the United States, you're not stuck using just American accents in HeyClock! Download some Australian, South African, or British voices for a little bit of variety!

• HeyClock can save as many regular routines as you want, whereas HeyClock Lite limits you to two regular routines (both versions can only have one temporary, or self-deleting routine at the moment).
• HeyClock lets you turn off the "Hey!" at the start of every spoken message if you want; it's permanently set in HeyClock Lite.
• HeyClock also lets you customize the first half of the spoken message- what comes before the time. In HeyClock Lite, the message always starts with "Hey! The time is now..."
• When using Low Power Mode, HeyClock lets you save up to three different "home locations" where your routines will trigger normally. In HeyClock Lite, you can only save one.

That's it! Everything else about HeyClock Lite is exactly the same, so if you're not sure if you'll get good enough GPS reception at the locations you plan to use HeyClock the most, try out the Lite version first and make sure it works the way you want.

I've already got a list of tweaks and features I'm planning on adding in when I get around to HeyClock version 2.0 (which will have to happen after the Android release). At the moment, the main features on that list are:

• Support for other languages and locales
• More than one self-deleting (temporary) routine
• The ability to sort and filter routines on the home screen
• Changing a routine's name after it's already been saved

But if you've got any other ideas or suggestions, I'd love to hear them!

Try closing HeyClock (actually closing it, not just sending it to the background) and opening it back up. Still not working?
Try restarting your phone- it is just a mini computer after all, and computers don't work so well when they go too long between reboots.
Could it be that you're just not getting any GPS pings where you are? Open up a map app and see if it can find your location; maybe you're just somewhere that GPS satellites can't reach.

If you've tried all the easy stuff and you're still having problems, contact us about it (don't necessarily uninstall and reinstall the app just yet- if you do that, it'll delete all your routines!). We can walk you through entering a special diagnostic mode that will let you send a log file of what HeyClock has been doing internally; hopefully that will help narrow down the cause of the issue! However, that log file will include information about your routines, so if their names include things like medications, people's names, or other sensitive information you don't want us to know about, you should delete the routine a day or two before entering the diagnostic mode and sending in the logs.