iOS 6 tip: Wake up to any song in your library

With iOS 6, you can roll out of bed to a mellow reggae beat or leap out of bed to thrash metal -- your choice.

If you use your iPhone as your alarm, you likely have grown tired of starting your day to the same marimba tone. You may not have noticed yet that after installing iOS 6 you can set the alarm to play a song instead of a tone.

(Credit: Screenshot by Matt Elliott/CNET)

Open the Clock app and choose Alarm. When you add a new alarm or edit an existing alarm, tap Sound. Here, you'll see a new Songs section. Tap "Pick a song" and you'll see a list of the songs in your music library. Choose a song and that's what you'll hear to start your day or end your nap.

(Credit: Screenshot by Matt Elliott/CNET)

If you use iTunes Match and have it set to display both locally stored songs and those in iCloud (Settings > Music > Show All Music), you can choose a song from iCloud as your alarm. Be careful, however, with choosing a song from the cloud -- if you lose Internet connectivity while sleeping, your alarm will be silent. I tested this by selecting a song that I hadn't downloaded to my iPhone, set the alarm, and turned on Airplane mode. When the alarm went off, it was silent. A best practice here would ... [Read more]