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Aurora – My Favorite Alarm Clock for the Mac

Aurora, from Metaquark Software (a German software company), is my new favorite alarm application for Mac. Not only does it allow me to wake up to my favorite music/playlist, but it has a ton of features, and an asking price – free – that all add up to one fantastic application.

First of all, Aurora is very simple to use. All you need to do to set up a new alarm is click the green icon in the toolbar. This adds a new alarm, and now all you need to do is navigate from tab to tab at the bottom of the screen, clicking options. You can set an alarm to wake you up each morning (simply by clicking each day in the Date & Time tab), what playlist in iTunes to use, how loud the volume should be, what the alarm should be called, and a few more options.

One of these other options is ingenious. The final tab in the Properties Panel (if the Properties Panel isn’t visible, click the blue button in the toolbar), is to have Aurora also – at the time of the alarm going off – launch extra items. This could be a web browser, a document, your favorite web link, feed readers… whatever. Simply drag the item(s) you want launched into that area, and when the alarm goes off, Aurora will launch those items. In this way, when you wake up, your computer will be ready to do what you want… no wasted time.

Aurora, like any good alarm clock, also offers a snooze setting. By default this is set to five minutes, but this is of course configurable, and you can even set any additional snooze time to a different length. Want to sleep for an extra ten minutes the first time you hit snooze, but only five minutes each additional time? No problem.

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As mentioned, you can set up a playlist in iTunes, then have Aurora use that to wake you. And if the music you selected is jarringly loud – a little too jarringly for waking up to – no problem, Aurora can fade in your selection, so you can gradually wake up. Much more peaceful this way!

And don’t worry about having to leave your computer on all night just to use Aurora. If you give it permission (by entering in your Administrative password), Aurora will be able to wake up your computer from sleep mode, so you can wake up and save electricity.

In addition to acting as an alarm clock, Aurora can also control iTunes such that you can fall asleep to it (and not have to worry about it playing all night long). To use this feature, hit the sheep icon in the toolbar, and the Fall Asleep Sheet slides into view. Here you can select how long music should play (set to 30 minutes by default), or you can select a number of songs. If you want, Aurora can lower the brightness of your monitor, and you can also choose to fade out the music after a certain number of minutes. At this point, that’s it, or – and this is especially nice if you have an alarm set for the morning – you can have Aurora put your computer to sleep. And then it can wake you up in the morning.

There’s more, but that’s a good overview of Aurora’s features. It’s easy to use, nice to look at, worked well in my testing, and is free. You can see why I like it so much… what’s not to like? Take my advice; head over to Aurora’s home page and give it a look. You won’t regret it.

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