Yocto Alarm Clock for iOS is free, full featured and very nice

There must be hundreds of alarm clock apps available for iOS. I've reviewed several, both good and bad. The free ones are usually not so great, the paid ones are usually a step up.

So along comes the Yocto Clock. It's free, has oodles of features, looks great and works well.

The Yocto clock can wake you up to any of a set of pre-selected sounds, or anything in your iTunes library. It can put you to sleep with ambient loops like the sounds of a forest at night. You can even use external audio, like Internet radio, as a music source.

The display offers the time, natch, and you can add a weather forecast or change the text color. There are several background pictures available, too, or your can add your own. You can even set images to refresh every time you launch the app, or on a timed rotation.

Screen brightness is controlled with a gesture, and a built-in help file explains the details. The universal Yocto Clock supports the Retina display, and looks great on the iPhone and the iPad. Note that the app must be in the foreground for alarms to work, and requires iOS 5.0 or greater.

My hat is off to developer David Mandell who has created a useful, attractive and full-featured app. If you are really happy with the app, you can donate $0.99 as a "tip" for the author. Darn well worth it.

Check the gallery for some screen grabs.