They updated the Android alarm interface.

5 years ago, I complained about the alarm interface in my post about how icons suck. At the time of writing, it was a chaotic spread of icons with unclear interactions.

In terms of minimalist appearance, it's a masterpiece, but it's a horrible thing to actually use in the moment, when you've been woken with bleary eyes and a panicked, confused, slow mind. There's no clue what to do here unless you can manage to ignore the blare from the speakers and calm your brain down long enough to read the size 8 text saying swipe right to dismiss. Now all you need to do is figure out to swipe right on a certain thing, and you can end the test of endurance.

I'm not the only one who thinks the alarm interface can be overly difficult. In the words of reddit user Momentarmknm:

Dude, I feel this in my bones. I'm a deep sleeper and it takes me months to adjust to changes in how to turn off the alarm. Some mornings I'm fine, and some mornings I'm so fucking confused and just like stabbing the phone with my thumb and nothing's working and I'm getting more and more angry and my wife is getting ready to pepper spray me if I don't shut up the damn phone.

Or maybe the complexity was intentional? Lepton_Decay appreciates it:

I find it kind of nice, I'm the kind of person that sets 15 alarms 2 minutes apart or else I'm going to lose my job because my body hates me, so the extra 5-10 seconds of panic trying to solve Google's latest alarm clock puzzle while the alarm deafens me at max volume is what actually gets me awake and out of bed.

Regardless of how you feel about it, that interface is now in the past. Here's what it looks like now:

To put it simply, I feel vindicated. 5 years ago, in my blog post, I wrote:

Here is how to make an alarm UI. Put a gigantic red button on the screen that says STOP in big letters, and then a different coloured button near to it that says SNOOZE in big letters. Just fill up the whole screen with the buttons, it's not like you need the rest of the screen space for anything else. Touching a button does the thing. That's it. That's all you have to do.

Well, here they are! There's two buttons that say SNOOZE and STOP in big letters! And if you touch the button, it does the thing!! Amazing!!

Looking at wider reactions from the press, they feel pretty good about this change as well. 9to5Google says that the new buttons are "ultimately easier and more straightforward", calling the old approach a bit heavy-handed. SamMobile calls them "easier to operate". An editorial from XDA Developers says it's "a more straight forward approach". The most critical comments come from Android Police, who write positively about the size of the buttons, but say that it might be a little too easy to tap them and dismiss the alarm.

As for me? I love it. I am genuinely so happy with what they did to this interface. It's perfect for me.

Now they just need to label the icons that show up when adjusting the volume.

Post-post correction: I've been informed that the blue clock screen is from AOSP Android (com.android.deskclock) and the black clock screen is from Google's clock (com.google.android.deskclock). I assumed it was a future version of the app because the layout and feel is identical, the only difference being updated design language. Either way, Google's clock being given buttons is still a somewhat recent change.