Why Sunup works — and what it can’t do

Why mornings feel foggy

The groggy feeling after waking is called sleep inertia. It usually fades over roughly 15–60 minutes. Light, movement and engaging tasks are among the things studied to help shake it off (Hilditch & McHill, 2019). Sunup gives that window something better to do than an endless feed — and then it ends. (See the plain-language doomscrolling detox morning routine.)

☀️ Wake check 🟢 Strong — as a measure

Tapping when a stimulus appears is the Psychomotor Vigilance Task (PVT), the standard lab measure of alertness and sleepiness (Dinges & Powell, 1985). A short version still tracks sleep loss well (Basner, Mollicone & Dinges, 2011).

Honest limits: ours is 10 seconds by default (about 4 taps), or 20 seconds if you choose it in Me — the longer check gives a steadier number. Lab versions run for minutes, and phone screens add their own delays. So your score is only ever compared with your own recent results on the same device. Part of a before/after jump is simply practice. Watch the trend over weeks. It is not a medical test.

🪟 Light & movement 🟢 Strong 🟡 Moderate

Light reaching your eyes is the main signal for your body clock (Duffy & Czeisler, 2009) — daylight is far brighter than indoor lamps. A short burst of movement gives a small, short-lived boost to thinking (Chang et al., 2012 meta-analysis).

🎮 The mini-games 🟡 Moderate

Each game is based on a classic task from psychology labs: the Schulte table and go/no-go (speed and attention), sequence and grid recall (working memory), mental arithmetic, anagrams, the Stroop colour-word task (Stroop, 1935) and number patterns. They make you use attention, speed and memory right now — a genuine warm-up.

What we don’t claim: that they raise your IQ or make you smarter in general. A major review found that brain-training mostly improves the trained tasks themselves, with little evidence of broad transfer (Simons et al., 2016). In 2016 the US Federal Trade Commission fined the makers of one famous brain-training app $2 million over claims like that. We won’t make them.

Difficulty adapts so you succeed roughly 85% of the time — a sweet spot for staying engaged and learning (Wilson et al., 2019).

🧘 Calm minute 🟡 Moderate · early

Wake Breath uses the “physiological sigh” (two inhales, one long exhale). In a month-long study, five minutes a day of structured breathing — cyclic sighing did best — improved mood and lowered physiological arousal (Balban et al., 2023). Focus Minute (counting breaths) follows the kind of brief mindfulness training that, in one small study of students, improved some attention and working-memory measures after four 20-minute sessions (Zeidan et al., 2010).

We keep your eyes open and you sitting up — calm, not sleepy. We don’t use breath-holding or hyperventilation techniques, which can make some people faint.

💡 Riddles, words, quotes & facts ⚪ Just for fun

No brain claims. A riddle, a lovely word and a surprising fact are small, curious wins to start your day. Every Fact-or-Myth comes with a source. Quotes are only attributed to a person when we could check the attribution; otherwise they’re labelled Proverb or Sunup original.

✍️ Morning pages 🟡 Some evidence

Morning pages come from Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way: write whatever is in your head, first thing, for your eyes only. The practice itself hasn’t been tested in trials. The closest research is on expressive writing — writing freely about thoughts and feelings — which shows small but real benefits for mood and stress on average (Pennebaker & Beall, 1986; Frattaroli, 2006). Sunup keeps it short: three lines by default (about a minute), or a page or three if you want more. It offers an optional prompt, counts paper too, and ends with one line for your day.

Your pages stay on your phone. If writing brings up something heavy, please reach out to someone you trust or a support line.

☕ “After Sunup, I’ll…” 🟢 Strong

Plans in the form “if X happens, then I’ll do Y” (implementation intentions) have a medium-to-large effect on actually doing what you meant to do: d = 0.65 across 94 studies (Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006). The riskiest moment of a morning is right after Sunup ends, so Sunup asks for the very next thing and where you’ll do it, and how long you want to stay scroll-free. Then it closes.

🌊 “I want to scroll” and riding the wave 🟢 Strong ⚪ Early

A pause with an easy way out works. In a study of the app one sec (280 people over six weeks), a short breathing pause before opening a chosen app cut opens of that app by 57%, and choosing “close it instead” mattered most (Grüning, Riedel & Lorenz-Spreen, 2023). Sunup’s “I want to scroll” button works the same way on every phone and on the website: a calm pause, an easy “no”, and a better swap.

Riding the urge means watching a craving rise, peak and fade without acting on it. It has helped in addiction research, for example with smokers (Bowen & Marlatt, 2009), but studies on phone habits are still early, so we label it Early. Opening the app anyway is never punished; Sunup just counts it, honestly.

🔌 Phone out of bed, out of the bedroom 🔵 Small but real

Several small randomised trials that kept phones out of bed or out of the bedroom found better sleep and wellbeing, with small effects. The evening tuck-in asks where the phone will charge and sets up tomorrow, so the phone doesn’t need to be by the pillow. A real Sunup alarm that rings through Silent is coming to the iPhone and Android apps; until then, keep a normal alarm across the room.

Snoozing isn’t the enemy. For people who habitually snooze, about 30 minutes of snoozing didn’t harm sleep or mood and slightly helped thinking right after waking (Sundelin, Landry & Axelsson, 2024). So Sunup fights the phone in your hand, not the snooze button.

🗓️ A forgiving week 🟡 Moderate

New habits take about two months to settle. The median is around 59–66 days, but it ranges from a few days to most of a year (Lally et al., 2010; Singh et al., 2024). Missing a single day doesn’t undo a habit (Lally et al., 2010). So Sunup counts a good week as any 5 mornings out of 7, and shows honest weekly numbers (minutes from Sunup to the first scroll, urges ridden out) instead of expecting the change to stick in week one.

Designed to end

One rewarded play per card per day. No infinite feed, no ads, no paid loot boxes, no guilt notifications. Your nook never wilts or dies if you skip a day. Gift odds are shown: 70% common, 25% rare, 5% sparkly. When you’re done, Sunup tells you to put the phone down.