Aurora for Mac

Aurora for Mac is an alarm clock system that allows you to set up numerous custom alarms, wake-up times, snooze options, and more from your Mac. Because it can manage the waking up and turning off of your computer to perform these functions, it is a viable alarm clock, and it goes a step further than your phone by integrating with your events and calendar so you can instantly see what's on tap for the day when you wake up.

Installation of Aurora is fairly straightforward and once you are done the interface clearly shows you what to do next and how to do it. You'll need to give the app permission to access various bits of information and to make changes to your computer, but once that's done it runs fairly smoothly. You can set alarms, choose playlists from your iTunes library, adjust the volume of that alarm, set a label, and choose to run a piece of software when the alarm goes off. It can be a useful tool for application management as well as waking up and there are tools for turning on and off the computer, waking it up at the appropriate time and more. Combined with Mac sleep control, playback control options, and a built-in iCloud calendar display, there are a number of useful tools for both waking and sleeping.

If you need a calendar/alarm app that will work equally well for managing your applications, startup time, and sleep time for the computer, then Aurora is a solid option. It is free to try and for those that use it frequently enough, well worth the paid upgrade to get more features.

Editors' note: This is a review of the trial version of Aurora for Mac 5.0.3.