Chapter 2: Introducing Binate — ⚡️ Binate

Energy Management > Time Management

Binate is the alarm app I wish existed during my lowest point.

Here's how it works:

Record a voice note (up to 30 seconds) before bed
Set your alarm with a sleep cycle calculator that tells you when to actually sleep
Wake up to your own voice — a personal message from you, reminding today's you why you need to get up

But it's more than an alarm:

Morning check-ins: Log your grogginess, complete your routine, start intentionally
Night wind-down: Breathing exercises, dream journal, bedtime logging
Energy analytics: See patterns in your sleep, grogginess, and routine completion over time
Gentle nudges: Soft reminders before bed to actually go to sleep

It's not about managing time. It's about managing energy.

The MVP is going Live soon

I built Binate in React Native to test the concept. If this resonates — if you've ever struggled to wake up, to find purpose in the morning, to hear a voice that actually motivates you or you are struggling with sleep, where your brain suddenly becomes active when the body needs rest — I want to hear from you.

MVP users become Insider Partners. You'll shape the roadmap. Your feedback builds the features.

The €1 coin is still on my desk.

It reminds me that rock bottom isn't the end. Sometimes it's the alarm that finally wakes you up.

Key challenges that I am currently working on

I guess this might be interesting for developers mostly, it's a bit technical.

Whenever someone is learning to build their first application, the default recommendation is almost always a TODO app. It’s predictable, well-scoped, and avoids platform-level constraints. I underestimated how complex something as “simple” as an alarm app can be.

On iOS, when a native alarm goes off (for example, in the Clock app), the system does not simply “open” the app. Instead, the OS presents a high-priority system-level alert interface. This alert is rendered above the normal app stack and is managed directly by the operating system. That’s why it can:

Appear over the lock screen
Play audio and vibrate persistently
Bypass silent mode and Focus/DND settings

Importantly, the underlying alarm app process itself is not necessarily foregrounded in the traditional sense — the system handles the presentation and audio behavior.

For third-party applications like mine, replicating this behavior is not permitted by default. iOS treats persistent, intrusive alerts as a potential abuse vector and therefore restricts that capability. The only sanctioned mechanism for similar behavior is via Critical Alerts, which require special entitlement approval from Apple.

Critical Alerts allow a notification to:

Play sound even if the device is in silent mode
Override Focus or Do Not Disturb
Trigger vibration regardless of mute state

However, this entitlement must be requested and justified through Apple’s review process. The app (Binate) has not yet been granted the Critical Alerts entitlement. Once the app is live in production, I plan to submit an application for this capability.

At present, the alarm feature behaves according to standard iOS notification policies:

If the device is not in silent mode and no restrictive Focus is active, the alarm will trigger with sound and vibration.
If the device is in silent mode or certain Focus/DND configurations, the alarm will appear as a standard notification without sound or vibration.

In short: the current behavior is compliant with iOS platform rules. Achieving system-level alarm parity requires explicit Apple approval through the Critical Alerts entitlement.

Hopefully, by the time you're reading this, this issue would be resolved!

What's next if there is a good feedback for the MVP?

Well, as mentioned, the app is built on react native, but for better experience, I would then rewrite the code in native languages.

Add more features and AI integrations, and the ability to communicate with smart tracking devices and more...

Maybe also build our own hardware and have an ecommerce store.