Smart Wakeup uses real-time brainwave monitoring to find the lightest moment in your sleep cycle before gently waking you.

An internal study of 6,200 nights shows why wake timing matters and who benefits most.

Muse by Interaxon today announced Smart Wakeup, the newest addition to its Sleep, by Design platform. Smart Wakeup monitors brain activity in real time and times a gentle audio wake-up to lighter sleep, so the alarm works with your brain, not against it.

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Smart Wakeup uses real-time brainwave monitoring to find the lightest moment in your sleep cycle before gently waking you.

Sleep Assist helps users fall asleep. Deep Sleep Boost strengthens the deepest, most restorative stage of the night. Smart Wakeup completes the arc: a brain-aware alarm that protects the sleep you’ve built rather than shattering it at the finish line.

What 6,200 Nights of Brain Data Told Us

Smart Wakeup was built on data. An internal analysis of approximately 6,200 nights from roughly 1,300 Muse users, each tracked with detailed brainwave analysis across every sleep stage and paired with morning mood ratings.¹

The biggest factor in morning mood? Sleep duration - by a wide margin. But among users who already slept well (seven-plus hours, high efficiency—about 26% of nights), waking during lighter sleep was associated with a noticeably better morning mood than waking from deeper stages.² When sleep needs are met, the transition out of sleep becomes the next factor you can actually improve. Light sleep is the brain’s natural exit ramp and catching that window means a clearer morning.

Smart Wakeup won’t rescue a bad night, but for people who sleep well, it delivers a measurable improvement by timing the alarm to the brain’s readiest moment. Sleep better, then wake smarter.

Why Your Alarm Hits a Different Brain Every Morning

Your brain doesn’t cycle through sleep stages at the same clock time every night. Muse’s data shows that REM-rich periods—which dominate the final hours of sleep—drift from night to night, shifting with travel, schedule changes, and your body’s own internal clock.³ A 7:00 AM alarm that catches light sleep on Monday might pull you out of deep sleep on Friday. That matters because sleep inertia—the grogginess that follows an abrupt awakening—is significantly worse when you’re pulled out of deep sleep.⁴

How Smart Wakeup Works

You set a wake window, 30 to 60 minutes, and a latest wake time. During that window, Muse reads your brain activity in real time and starts a gentle, gradual audio rise the moment it detects lighter sleep. If no lighter-sleep window appears, the system wakes you by your set time.

“There’s a moment every morning that nobody’s ever had control over—when the alarm fires and your brain gets pulled out of whatever stage it’s in. Smart Wakeup gives you control over that moment for the first time.” — Nadia Kumentas, Chief Marketing Officer, Muse

Why Muse Is Different

Most smart alarms estimate sleep stage from motion or heart rate. Muse reads brain activity directly using EEG, the same type of measurement used in hospital sleep labs.⁵ When the entire point of a smart alarm is acting on the right sleep stage at the right moment, the difference between measuring brain activity and estimating it from wrist movement is not incremental. It’s foundational.

What’s Next

Smart Wakeup launches today with its core brain-guided wake window. Planned 2026 expansions include:

• Sleep Goal Wake: waking once a personal recovery target is met
• Dream Retention Mode: timing wake-ups to REM for dream recall, and
• Hypnopompic Audio: layering guided content into the transition from sleep to wakefulness—using the brain’s most receptive morning moment intentionally.

Availability

Starting April 15, 2026, Smart Wakeup requires a Muse Premium subscription and is compatible with Muse S (Gen 1), Muse S (Gen 2), and Muse S Athena on iOS and Android. Deep Sleep Boost and Sleep Assist are included free with every Muse S device.

About Muse by Interaxon Inc.

Muse is a brain health platform built on the world’s largest consumer brain wave dataset—over 1 billion minutes decoded to date. Muse’s AI-driven tools support sleep, focus, and stress management for consumers, while powering more than 200 third-party-led studies from institutions including the Mayo Clinic, MIT, and Harvard. Muse S Athena, featuring combined EEG and fNIRS sensors, is the company’s most advanced device. Headquartered in Toronto, Canada.

Learn more: choosemuse.com

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“There’s a moment every morning that nobody’s ever had control over—when the alarm fires and your brain gets pulled out of whatever stage it’s in. Smart Wakeup gives you control over that moment for the first time.” — Nadia Kumentas, CMO, Muse