How to Customize Your Morning Briefing
Your morning briefing can be customized to your preferences, shedding light on what's important for you today. In this article, you will learn how to add the following features to your morning briefing:
👤 Personalize Your Morning Briefing
☑️ Today's Tasks Briefing (integration with Structured)
📅 Today's Calendar Events Briefing
🚫 Social Media Blocking (integration with one sec)
Please note that some features require ⭐️ Awake Pro.
Personalize Your Morning Briefing
To make your morning briefing more personal, you can enter your name. To do so, tap the Morning Briefing section and select Your Info. Here, you can enter your preferred name, which will appear in each morning briefing.
Customize Your Morning Briefing
You decide what should be placed in your morning briefing. You can add the weather forecast, integrate Structured to get an overview of what's on your list today, or block your social media access in the morning with one sec.
Following, you will learn more about each feature and how to add it to your morning briefing.
Turn Off Sleep Focus
Some users might use a sleep focus to not get disturbed while resting. To start your day right, you can add turning off your sleep focus as the first thing during your morning briefing.
To add this feature to your morning briefing:
Tap the Morning Briefing section and tap on Turn off Sleep Focus.
To use this feature, you will have to install a helper shortcut in Apple's Shortcuts app. To do so, tap Install Helper Shortcut. (If you don't have the Shortcuts app installed yet, you can download it here.)
This will automatically take you to the Shortcuts app. Select + Add Shortcut.
Head back to the Awake app and select Verify Shortcut to check if everything is set up correctly.
Tap + Add to Briefing to add this feature to your morning briefing.
💡Turning off an active sleep focus is crucial to use the Sleep Analysis feature described below.
Sleep Analysis Briefing
In your morning briefing, you can also log how you slept and link your Apple Health data to get an overview how you actually slept.
To add the sleep analysis feature to your morning briefing:
Tap the Morning Briefing section and tap on Sleep Analysis.
If you want to link your actual sleep data from Apple Health, e.g. if you're an Apple Watch user, select Enable Apple Health Access. You can skip this step, if you prefer to just log how you slept and continue with step 4.
Selecting Enable Apple Health Access will take you to your Health Access settings. Toggle the button next to Sleep and select Allow at the bottom. Now, head back to the Awake app.
Tap + Add to Briefing to add this feature to your morning briefing.
Now, logging your sleep and getting a sleep analysis will be part of your morning briefing:
In the morning briefing, you will be asked: "How was your sleep?".
Use the slider to log how you slept from "bad" to "excellent".
If you use the Apple Health integration, after logging your sleep, you will be provided with your sleep analysis, including your sleep interval, total duration and the amount of wake-ups.
⚠️ Please note that the sleep analysis feature comes with some limitations:
When using a sleep focus at night, you will have to disable it first to load and see your sleep data from Apple Health. You can add the feature to turn off your sleep focus as described in the section above.
Logging exact sleeping data (e.g. amount of wake-ups) might require an Apple Watch or other smartwatch that logs data in Apple Health.
Weather Briefing
After waking up, getting dressed would be the next step. Therefore, it comes in handy to know what weather is expected today. Can you wear shorts, or should you take an umbrella with you?
To add the weather forecast to your morning briefing:
Tap the Morning Briefing section and tap on Weather.
Here, you can either manually choose your location or use your location automatically. In the latter case, you have to grant Awake access to your location, which can always be revoked in your general ⚙️ Settings app.
Tap Add to Briefing to add the weather forecast to your morning briefing.
Today's Tasks Briefing
Of course, we don't create a new app that doesn't integrate with our very own Structured app. Add Structured to your morning briefing to get a glimpse at all tasks and events planned for today. This way, you're already briefed about what's happening and what has to be done.
⬇️ You can download Structured for free on the App Store here. The Structured briefing can be used for free in Awake.
To add Structured to your morning briefing:
Tap the Morning Briefing section and tap on Today's Tasks.
Now, tap Link Structured to link Structured and Awake. You can always unlink Structured either in Awake or in Structured > Settings > Awake.
Tap Add to Briefing to add Structured to your morning briefing.
Now, Structured will be part of your morning briefing, displaying your currently running or upcoming task, as well as all tasks planned for today. By tapping the task, we will take you directly to Structured to check it off. You can also tap any other task's icon to head over to the respective task.
Calendar Briefing ⭐️
If not included in Structured already or if you're not a Structured user, you can also add your Apple Calendar events to your morning briefing. You can also add other calendars, such as Google Calendar or Outlook Calendar, as long as the respective calendar is compatible with the Apple Calendar. Learn more about this here.
To add your calendars to your morning briefing:
Tap the Morning Briefing section and tap on Calendar.
Now, tap Enable Calendars to link your calendar and Awake.
You have to Allow Full Access to your calendars in order to display them in Awake. This can always be revoked in your general ⚙️ Settings app > Privacy & Security > Calendars > Awake.
Now, you get an overview of all calendars in your Apple Calendar. Select the respective calendars you'd like to be displayed in your morning briefing.
Tap Add to Briefing to finish.
⚠️ Please note that this feature requires access to your Apple Calendar (that can always be revoked in your general settings app) and is a ⭐️ Awake Pro feature.
Social Media Blocking
Turning off your alarm and finishing your morning briefing might feel like a big accomplishment already. But don't fall back into unhealthy habits by immediately heading over to your favorite social media app and rotting in bed for another hour. Simply enable the one sec integration and block out your social media access for 30 minutes.
⬇️ You can download one sec for free on the App Store here. The one sec intervention can be used for free in Awake.
To add one sec to your morning briefing:
Tap the Morning Briefing section and tap on Block Social Media.
Tap Open to link one sec and Awake.
Now, we will take you to the one sec app where you can customize the duration of how long social media access should be blocked in the morning and select the apps that should be blocked.
Tap Continue, which takes you back to Awake.
Select Add to Briefing to finish.
