Hey everyone,

I released an app called **MorningCall** about two years ago. Since then, I’ve kept it free and completely ad-free while continuing to cover the costs of servers, APIs, TTS generation, and other operating expenses myself.

I initially avoided adding payments because I didn’t think the app was good enough yet. Even after deciding to launch it globally, I continued developing it for more than six months without monetization.

I also never wanted to add ads. For an app that people interact with first thing in the morning, I felt that ads would compromise both the visual design and the overall user experience.

For a long time, I kept telling myself, “After just a few more improvements, it will be ready.” Eventually, however, I realized that without any revenue, it becomes harder to maintain the motivation and resources needed to keep improving the product. That ultimately prevents me from delivering more value to the people already using it.

Features such as generating localized weather reports and reading them aloud to every user with AI voices also come with meaningful recurring costs.

I now believe MorningCall provides enough value to introduce a paid tier, so I recently launched **Pro Plan** with several additional features.

# About the app

MorningCall is an alarm app that wakes you with an actual incoming **VoIP call**.

When you answer, an AI voice can tell you things such as:

* Today’s weather
* News
* Personal notes
* Quotes and other morning content

The free version is designed to be fully usable on its own, and the app contains **no ads**.

MorningCall Pro adds:

* More voice options
* Unlimited Call Plans
* Additional content such as quotes and personal notes
* A Call Assistant that lets you snooze by speaking, currently released as an experimental feature

MorningCall originally started because I was frustrated with the limitations and edge cases of iOS alarm systems, and because I personally found waking up through a phone call surprisingly effective.

What began as a relatively simple experiment eventually became a long-term project because I wanted to turn it into something genuinely useful.

# Tech Stack

**iOS**

* UI/App: SwiftUI, UIKit for AppDelegate
* Audio: AVFoundation, AVKit, MediaPlayer
* VoIP/Calls: CallKit
* Alarm and widgets: AlarmKit, ActivityKit, WidgetKit, App Intents
* Payments: StoreKit 2
* Other: BackgroundTasks for caching, CoreLocation for weather, Speech for speech recognition

AlarmKit acts as a fallback when the user cannot receive the VoIP call because of network conditions or another delivery issue.

**Backend**

* API server: ElysiaJS, TypeScript, Bun
* Database: PostgreSQL, Drizzle ORM
* Infrastructure: AWS ECS/Fargate, RDS, SQS, S3, Lambda, and CDK
* VoIP push\*\*:\*\* APNs using `parse/node-apn` on the Node.js server
* Audio generation: OpenAI API and Google TTS
* Other: Docker and Sentry

# Development Challenge: Preparing fresh audio before the user answers

MorningCall receives VoIP calls through CallKit and plays the generated audio content using `AVAudioPlayer`.

The important part is that the audio must be downloaded and ready to play as quickly as possible after the user receives the call.

When the app had relatively few users, starting the download as soon as the VoIP push arrived worked reasonably well.

After the global launch, however, the app began operating across a much wider range of network conditions. Requests also became concentrated around peak morning hours. In some cases, preparing the audio took more than ten seconds.

This creates a particularly bad experience for a calling app: the user answers the call but hears nothing. After several seconds of silence, they naturally assume the app is broken and hang up.

Content freshness makes the problem more difficult.

If the audio could be generated far in advance, the app could simply download and cache it immediately after the user configures their alarm. However, information such as weather and news loses value quickly.

The audio therefore needs to be generated anywhere from a few minutes to roughly an hour before the scheduled call, while still being available immediately when the user answers.

**CDN**

My first infrastructure-side improvement was serving the audio through CloudFront.

This reduced transfer times, but it did not fundamentally solve the problem. The app still had to complete the download within a very small window before the user answered.

**BackgroundTasks and Silent push**

I then experimented with iOS BackgroundTasks and silent push notifications.

I did not expect either mechanism to be completely reliable because iOS is understandably conservative about background execution and battery usage. However, using them together produced a meaningful improvement.

BackgroundTasks do not allow an app to schedule code to run at an exact time. With `earliestBeginDate`, the app can only tell the system that a task may run after a certain point.

The actual execution time is still determined by iOS based on factors such as:

* Battery state
* User behavior
* Network availability
* System resources

Silent push can also wake an app from a remote server, but its execution is not guaranteed. Even when APNs delivers the notification, iOS may decide not to launch the app in the background. Frequent silent pushes may also be throttled.

I therefore use both mechanisms to create as many prewarming opportunities as iOS allows.

Whenever the app receives an opportunity to run, it checks whether upcoming audio content is available and downloads it into the local cache.

The solution is not perfect, but it has made playback considerably more reliable and reduced the amount of silence users experience after answering a call.

# Development Challenge: AlarmKit edge cases

When AlarmKit was first announced, my reaction was basically, “Finally!”

I integrated it immediately, but I encountered several serious edge cases. These may have been fixed in more recent versions.

MorningCall registers an AlarmKit alarm as a backup so that the user can still wake up if the VoIP push is not delivered because of a network issue or another failure.

In my testing, however, alarms that remained registered after failing to fire at their intended time could occasionally trigger around midnight.

A similar problem could occur if the app accidentally registered an alarm using a time that had already passed.

To mitigate this, MorningCall regularly reconciles the alarms registered with AlarmKit against its own schedule. It removes alarms that are expired, invalid, or no longer associated with an active Call Plan.

I also encountered an interaction between CallKit and AlarmKit.

If an AlarmKit alarm is already ringing when a CallKit call arrives, answering the call can stop the AlarmKit audio. If the user then fails to properly receive the call, they may end up looking at an AlarmKit screen asking them to wake up while neither sound nor vibration is active. 😂

AlarmKit is still a relatively young framework, so I think it needs to be used carefully and tested against as many lifecycle and timing edge cases as possible.

# AI Disclosure

**AI-assisted.**

I use AI within predefined rules and product requirements while following a TDD(Test Driven, Unit Testing) and DDD(Domain Driven) development process. Architecture and implementation decisions remain controlled by the intended product design rather than being generated without supervision.

# Extra one-month free offer

To let people from r/iOSProgramming try the Pro features without much commitment, I’m providing an offer for one additional free month.

This is added on top of the standard one-month free period and is available to new, existing, and previously expired users.

**Offer link:**

[https://apps.apple.com/redeem?ctx=offercodes&id=6654901061&code=IOSPROGRAMMING](https://apps.apple.com/redeem?ctx=offercodes&id=6654901061&code=IOSPROGRAMMING)

Valid through **August 31, 2026**, and limited to **1,000 redemptions**.

If the installation gets stuck after opening the offer link, please install the app first and then open the offer link again.

**App Store:**

[https://apps.apple.com/us/app/morning-call-ai-alarm-clock/id6654901061](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/morning-call-ai-alarm-clock/id6654901061)

I’d especially appreciate feedback on the incoming-call experience, audio playback reliability, the Pro feature set, and any CallKit or AlarmKit edge cases you’ve encountered.

Thanks for taking a look!

I built an app with CallKit and AlarmKit: MorningCall - an alarm app that wakes you with a real VoIP call