How can we help?

An iPhone with iOS 26 or later, and someone to share your mornings with. There’s no account to create.

First, choose how you want to use Athena: Just the alarm (always free, nobody else sees your mornings) or Connect with others (Athena Connect: a free first week, then a small subscription one person pays for the whole circle). If you connect, pick who it’s for:

• For me — you wake up, others see it. Big, clear buttons.
• My parent or grandparent — you look after someone who uses “For me”.
• My child — you look after a child who has Athena on their own phone.
• My child’s phone — you’re a parent setting up your child’s iPhone.
• Our whole family — everyone wakes up and everyone can see each other.

Your own alarm is always free: it rings on your phone and needs no server. Sharing mornings with a circle — wake-up alerts, updates, the feed and reactions between phones — runs on our servers, so it needs a small subscription, Athena Connect. One person pays, and everyone in the circle is covered. Every new circle gets a free week first.

Yes. Athena uses the iPhone’s own alarm system, the same one the Clock app uses. It needs permission to schedule alarms; without it, it can’t ring. You can check this in the iPhone’s Settings › Athena.

Yes. Choose which days the alarm rings, and give any day its own time — a later one at the weekend, for example.

That’s fine. The circle can see the snooze, and a note about a quiet morning waits until a little after the snooze ends.

Yes. In Settings › Alarm sound, pick a short part of one of your own videos or sound files. It stays on your phone and isn’t shared with anyone. Try it before you rely on it: if your sound can’t be played, a standard alarm sound normally plays instead. More in the terms for your own alarm sound.

When there’s no “I’m up” within the time they chose after the alarm — 30 minutes unless it’s changed, and later if you snoozed. It’s worked out in the time zone of the person waking up, so travel and late-night alarms are handled. If their phone may have been offline, the app says so.

Athena is a gentle morning check-in. It isn’t a medical alarm or a call-for-help service, and it never contacts anyone outside your circle.

Open Athena’s Settings › Alerts on this phone. It checks your notification settings, shows what to fix, and lets you send yourself a test alert. Also check that the person’s setting in the app is “Morning update” if you want to hear about each wake-up. With “Only if needed”, no news means the morning is fine.

Updates between phones also stop when a circle is paused because it has no plan. Your own alarm still rings.

In the app, create an invite and send the code. It works once and lasts 10 minutes (30 minutes for a family). If it runs out, simply make a new one.

Up to 12 people in one circle.

Open the person and choose Remove, or leave the circle from Settings. When someone leaves, their entries and reactions in that circle are deleted.

If you set up the new iPhone from a backup of the old one, Athena usually carries on with your circles. Otherwise, install Athena and join your circle again with a fresh invite code from someone in it. If you pay for a plan, open Settings › Plan and tap Restore purchases.

Every new circle is free for its first week together. The week starts when the first person joins the circle and lasts 7 days; the app shows the exact end date on the circle (“Free week until …”). Until someone joins, nothing counts.

No payment details are asked for, no subscription starts, and nothing is charged automatically when it ends.

The app reminds you before it ends. After that, wake-up alerts and updates between phones pause, unless someone in the circle subscribes. Everyone’s own alarm keeps ringing, and the circle and its people stay: it comes back as soon as someone covers it. The next time you open the app, a short letter from the developer appears, followed by the plans. You can read it again in Settings › Plan.

Each phone gets one free week, counted on the phone that creates the circle. If you create a circle again while that week is still running, it keeps the same end date.

That can happen with a second-hand phone. Email j.tidemann@me.com with your Support ID (Settings › Plan) and we’ll reset it. Every request gets an answer.

Athena Connect comes monthly or yearly. One plan covers up to 3 circles and 12 people. Anyone in a circle can pay — it only takes one — and everyone in that circle is covered. The App Store shows the price in your currency before you buy. The full details are in the plan terms.

In Athena, open Settings › Plan, tap See plans and choose one. Apple handles the payment. Your plan covers your circles straight away; you’ll see “Covered by you”.

On a child’s phone there are no prices or purchase screens: a grown-up can subscribe from their own phone.

1. On your iPhone, open Settings and tap your name (your Apple Account) at the top.
2. Tap Subscriptions, then Athena Connect.
3. Tap Cancel Subscription.

You can also get there from Athena: Settings › Plan › Manage or cancel. Your plan keeps working until the end of the period you’ve paid for. Deleting Athena, or deleting your data, doesn’t cancel it.

Apple handles payments and refunds. You can ask Apple for a refund at reportaproblem.apple.com. If it’s refunded, the plan ends and the app shows when updates stop.

Apple tries again for a while, and your circles keep working in the meantime. The app shows the date updates would stop, so you can update your payment details in your Apple Account, or someone else in the circle can step in.

It’s off unless you turn it on. When it’s on, the app notes where you are at the moment you tap “I’m up” — approximately (about 1 km and a neighbourhood name) or precisely, as you choose. It’s never tracked in the background, and the place is removed after 24 hours, or straight away when you turn sharing off.

Touch and hold an empty spot on the Home Screen or Lock Screen, choose Edit, then Add Widget, and pick Athena. It comes in small, medium and large, and in three Lock Screen shapes.