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Hey everyone!
Let’s see what’s confusing in Night Stand and I will try to provide clarifications in this post. Please write about your problems in comments and I’ll be updating this post with new answers. Let’s consider this a provisional FAQ for Night Stand
Q1. App Store application on my device wouldn’t let me update Night Stand to the newest version. I deleted it and tried downloading it again but now it tells me I have to buy it! WTF?
This is a naughty one. We are really sorry, but this is how App Store works: say if there was a freeware app and it got an update which is payware — you absolutely have to own the previous (free) version to be entitled to the update. By owning I mean: have it either on your device or in iTunes. If you don’t, I’m sorry to tell you that you are not entitled for a free update.
What can you do then?
If these don’t work, please contact Apple for help. We really can’t do anything about your device not working properly. It’s Apple who provides means to downloading and installing applications, not us.
Q2. Why did you remove Auto-Lock feature from Night Stand? It goes to sleep after a few minutes!
A. We didn’t. Go to Night Stand settings > Sleep Timer and set it to Never. That’s it. It means that your device will never go to sleep when Night Stand is running. It’s worth noting that we recommend plugging your device to power supply when running Night Stand. Especially at night: it won’t drain the battery and you have a fully charged device first thing in the morning.
Q3. Will Night Stand damage my device’s screen?
A. This issue is called “burn-in”. To my (perhaps limited) knowledge, modern LCD displays do not suffer from it.
Q4. Will alarm go off if the screen goes to sleep?
A. No. Night Stand has to be running and be active (i.e. visible on the screen) for the alarm to play. To achieve this, set Sleep Timer to Never.
Q5. Night Stand crashes! What do I do?
A. Try rebooting your device. It’s a known issue that iPhone sometimes “swells up” when you use a few memory-consuming applications. Rebooting usually brings things back to normal.
Q6. Will Night Stand kill my battery?
A. See answer to question 2.
Q6. I have an iPod touch 1G. Why I can’t hear the alarm?
A. It’s a limitation imposed by Apple. Third party application’s can’t use the built-in speaker. Apple’s alarm clock can sound because Apple can do many things with iPhone which third party developers can’t.
In the tip section of the program page, it talks about setting a play list and then turning on Night Stand to go to sleep to soothing music. How do you set Night Stand to turn off the play list? I did not see any instructions or anything in settings for this.
I’m sorry if wording is a bit confusing, but it simply means that you can go to iPod, start playing music and then open up Night Stand. Our application cannot control or even access music playlists on your device – it’s a limitation imposed by Apple.
ok so i have an ipod touch and i downloaded this program and i can see everything but i cannot hear the alarm?? i have everything on that i can think of does it not work correctly cuz of the ipod touch?
Ron – You can set a timer in the Apple Clock application to “Sleep iPod”. I don’t know if this helps you or not. Unfortunately it didn’t help me. I thought it would sleep the iPod application, but no, it sleeps the whole iPhone thereby disabling Night Stand.
To the guys at Spoonjuice – I just left a bad review in the iTunes store because I thought you had removed the “Disable Auto-Lockout” feature. I see now that you have not removed it but changed how it works. Maybe you could explain it in the splash screen, or maybe change the name of the option from Sleep Timer to Auto-Lockout. Also I preferred the application settings in the old location. I like the clean uncluttered screen for the clock. Anyway, thanks for the great app. I bought The Plateau full version to support you guys when Night Stand was still free. It’s a great game as well an I can’t wait to see what you guys do next. I’m off to update my iTunes review.
I loaded this app last night and just as the reviews indicate the App turned off in the middle of the night even after I set the Sleep Timer to Never. It redisplayed when the standard iPhone alarm went off but then disappeared again a few hours later. In case it helps diagnose: Alarm Off, Theme Flip Clock, Sleep Timer Never, Week Begins Sunday, Show Secs Off, Show Date On, 23 Hr Off
@staci: you won’t hear the alarm if your iPod touch is 1st gen. Only 2nd gen touch has a built-in speaker.
@Caleb: yeah, you are right. We made a little mistake here. “Sleep Timer” will be renamed back to “Auto-Lock” in the next update. Which we have submitted to App Store a few days ago.
I’m afraid that Settings button will stay where it is – most our users wanted it there, so we’ll keep it. Sorry!
@Shane: that is strange! There is one thing that might have disabled Night Stand: calendar notification. Maybe that was it? I will ask developers to test for bug in this area anyway.
can you please explain why a clock app eats the battery the way it does? its very disappointing to have to have the device plugged in for this app to be functional.
i have also found that when in a dock, and i have tried with both an official apple dock, and a belkin dock, the alarm does not go off until the device is removed. i cant understand it, it works when connected directly, but not from a dock. sleep timer is never. the app is still visible, but alarm will not sound until removed after the alarm time is past.
a few things i would like to see added:
option to remove background glow on lcd themes
option for normal snooze mode
option for user set snooze duration
decreased battery consumption
more alarm sounds
@Piotr – I understand. Maybe you could have the settings button fade out like in the Koi Pond application? I agree with jerry, a normal snooze mode would be good option. I also mentioned in my iTunes review, it would be cool if the LCD glow was dynamic based on which LCD segments were lit. Maybe it’s too hard to do though.
Here’s another one: After every upgrade I keep falling back to version 1.0.2 for one reason or another. First I was confused about the “sleep timer” setting just like almost everybody else and now I discovered, that the current version (2.0.1 at the time of this writing) cannot display the (red, “LED style”) clock upside-down anymore (I sometimes just let the iPhone hang down from it’s charging cable, so it’s “upside-down”). Also: The “brightness” adjustment by the app. apparently doesn’t really affect the iPhone’s display brightness, but rather uses “dimmer” colors for it’s graphics, right? At least the “background glow” of the display remains much stronger than when I reduce the iPhones brightness in the system settings app. Hints?
I used to be able to start music and set the iPhone timer to sleep iPhone which would turn the music off and the Night Stand would still display. Now when I sleep the iPhone to kill the music it also turns off Night Stand. With the new version, how do I get the music to shut off and still display the Night Stand Clock?
Piotry says: you won’t hear the alarm if your iPod touch is 1st gen.
If this is true, could you explain why we can hear the alarm of the Clock application?
I love Night Stand. I place my iPhone in front of me during lectures with Night Stand running so that I can pace myself.
I upgraded to version 2.1 a few days ago. At the same time I started to synchrnize the calendar to iCal on my Mac. Since then, the clock goes to sleep on me even though I have set the timer to “Never”. I suspect that the Calendar is reminding me to “Give Lecture”, which then relegates Night Stand to a background program and its settings no longer control the screen.
I hope you can fix this.
Same here: never feature of auto-lock isn’t working.
Thanks for the cool app guys. A few comments about the seconds feature…usually in digital displays (just checked on my Mac for example), if the seconds are displayed there is no need to have the colon flashing as well (as the numbers change). Seems a bit redundant, as the flashing is presumably the indicator of the passage of time. I hope that makes sense.
If there are no seconds displayed, then some LCD displays will either blink the colon all at once, or alternate the top and bottom dots to indicate the passage of seconds.
I like user control…it could be useful to have ‘colon blinking’ on/off as a user option.
More sounds, please!!! And add an option to disable the math question to turn the alarm off. I am sure that not all of us need that level of alertness to wake up, and would prefer to spend the extra time in the morning stumbling to the coffee pot. (yes, I resorted to the pod’s internal alarms until there is an option to disable the math question, but I hate the pod’s built-in alarm sounds)
I would also love to see more themes and alarm sounds. Not funny/goofy sounds like stepping on a duck, but go visit an electronics store and listen to all the sounds that a standard electronic alarm clock makes. I am not sure about everyone else, but I really like the “classic” sound that comes with this app, and wouldn’t mind more variety of a similar type. Just nothing like the anthrax alarm that comes with the iPod built-in alarm.
Basically, take the alarm that is built-in, and give it more sounds. Add days of the week so it doesn’t have to be reset every day, etc… THAT is the premise behind a night stand alarm clock.
Just keep the simplistic design, you have done well. I am probably an update or two away from throwing away my conventional bedside alarm clock.
BTW The Plateau absolutely rocks for a puzzle game! Sitting at the doctor’s office, or want to waste some time while listening to another boring conference call? This is one really well done and unique puzzle games.
Awesome App! I can almost replace my nightstand
)
Does Nightstand allow you to wake up to iTunes in addition to preset sounds? I would like to see the ability to slide the dimmer to a brightness as low as I prefer.
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Your application is fundementally flawed as your alarm sounds do not work. The phone just vibrates when the alarn invokes. Complete waste of money!
I would really like the brightness to dim the backlight rather than just the clock colors. At the moment I have to go into the iPhone settings and manually turn brightness down each night before launching Night Stand. Either an auto backlight dimmer or a slider in the app would be much better.
Thanks
Alan
is there a way for the alarm to play if the phone is on silent? i work late and get up just before noon and don’t want clients calling me from 8am and on just so my alarm will play. the iphone alarm plays even if the phone is on silent. anything you can do?