How To: Wake Up to Spoken Calendar Events & Weather Forecasts for the Day on Your Nexus 7

I regularly use my Nexus 7 to wake up in the mornings (well, sometimes afternoons), but it's pretty minimal in what it does. I shouldn't have to open multiple apps when I wake up to figure out my schedule for the day or what the weather is going to be like.

Unfortunately, using the stock alarm clock just won't do, so that's where AlarmPad from MindMe Apps comes in. Not only will you wake up to updated weather forecasts, but this application will integrate with your stock Calendar app and show you what your day is going to look like, which is all conveniently placed on your lock screen upon waking up.

Best of all, for those of us that can't even bother to look at our devices in the morning, AlarmPad will speak a rundown of our upcoming day back to us. Grab the app for free on Google Play and let's get started.

There's also a pro version available for $1.99 that removes ads, or you can join the beta testers Google+ community to use the ad-free version for free.

Setting Up Your Alarms on AlarmPad

Open up AlarmPad and add a new alarm. Input basic alarm clock features like setting up the time, snooze, and repeat, then dive into the main features under More Options.

Add a personal message and the extra information you'd like to see and hear upon waking up—calendar events and weather are great things to know in the morning.

When you wake up, simply slide the lock to the eye icon to stop the alarm and expose all your new day information, right on the lock screen.

I like to have the app speak about my day after I disable the alarm, so I use the "Speak messages after alarm" function.

Slide to the right to view more weather information, then slide once more to view any events you may have on your daily schedule.

Fine-Tuning Your Wake-Up Experience

Tailor AlarmPad the way you'd like by tapping on the three dots in the top right corner to enter the Settings. From here, you can easily adjust snoozing preferences, monitor your calendar events for future notifications, as well as enable Advanced Mode, which enables calendar-based alarms.

Aside from snoozing preferences, you can use custom locations and units for weather information, and you can also change the text-to-speech language engine and language. Other minor preferences include enabling a transparent background on the lock screen and Respect silent mode, which makes the text-to-speech lady shut up when you're device has its volume down (your alarm will still be audible).

You can only have up to five alarms with the free version, but the pro version (either the paid or the free beta one) will make this unlimited.

Full-featured functionality and an easy-to-use UI make AlarmPad a must-have app for me, and possibly for you as well. Now you can easily wake up knowing what exactly your day is going to look like without even getting up.