Every morning, always just a smidge earlier than I’d like, I’m stirred awake by a tinny warble rising from the other side of the room. It’s “Ripples,’’ the alarm tone on my husband’s iPhone.

I hate “Ripples.’’ Not because it wakes us up, but because it tries to wake us up and just can’t seem to get the job done. Four or five times every morning, “Ripples’’ gets slapped back into silence as soon as it starts to chirp – and it just sits there and takes it. “Ripples’’ does not make for an inspiring way to start your day.

Which is to say, “Ripples’’ is no Rock.

This past week, wrestler/actor/objectively terrifying person Dwayne “The Rock’’ Johnson launched Rock Clock – his very own motivational alarm clock app. Rock Clock adopts a big-picture approach to getting you out of bed, positioning the struggle of waking up as merely the first baby step in the grand journey of your day, where goals wait to be smashed.

There are plenty of adequate alarm clock apps already out there, and they range from the aggressively annoying (Alarmy won’t stop ringing until you take a photo of a distant location in your house) to the plainly sadistic (BetterMe shames you on social media when you hit snooze). But none of them fuse a literal wake-up call with a metaphorical one as effectively as Rock Clock.

Open the app, and you’re pushed to set a goal, or choose one from an all-caps menu of pre-written options (e.g.: “GAIN FIVE POUNDS OF MUSCLE’’; “FINALLY CLEAN OUT GARAGE/CLOSET/LOCKER’’; “COME UP WITH THE BEST GOAL. EVER. OF ALL TIME’’). From there, you set a wake-up time (there’s a preset for “Rock Time’’ – 5:30 a.m.), and choose your Rock-infused alarm tone: “Open your eyes up, get your candy-ass out of bed,’’ he sings on “Good Morning Sunshine.’’ “The Roar’’ is just the sound of a stadium crowd chanting “Get! Up! Get! Up!’’ And on “Ring Ring,’’ Johnson tries some method acting: “Ring, ring.... ring, ring.....ring, ring...RING RING!’’

There is no snooze button.

Each day, the app rewards you with a video featuring the Rock offering some manner of motivational/promotional message. Today it was “Good morning everybody! Get after it, chase your goals, chase your greatness! We’re on the set of ‘Baywatch,’ here we go!’’ [Pan to screaming crowd of yahoos.]

Johnson sounds a lot like another unlikely online guru, hip-hop star DJ Khaled, whose Snapchat account has become an ever-refreshing font of motivational messaging. One YouTube pep talk he recorded last year inspired millions of push-ups and possibly even more memes. (For a more concentrated dose, one remix has Khaled repeating “Another one’’ for an hour. I will listen to this while wrapping Christmas gifts.)

Motivation is becoming a hot commodity across the appscape. Rock Clock arrives amidst a wave of other motivational apps and services.

Some take a human-ish approach (like coach.me, an app which links you to living breathing life coaches, for a fee), and some are built upon automated nudges (like Balanced, which tracks your activities, goals, and helps you fit them all into the day). Some are pushy and nichey (like Flowstate, an app that motivates you to write by deleting your work if you pause for more than a few seconds), and others are just passive and creepy (like Motivation Sleep Learning, which whispers empowering messages to you in your sleep).

But do any of them really work? Can apps really motivate you to be a better person when just opening them seems like too much effort?

At the end of day — or the very start of it, as it were — you are the one who must ultimately bring your feet to the floor, summon the energy, stand up, and “chase your goals’’ (or the bus). The sound of a grenade destroying my nightstand is inarguably a more effective way to wake me up than “Ripples’’ ever was; but once my eyes are open, every choice after that is mine to make — and if it’s between The Rock and a soft place, he can keep dreaming.

Michael Andor Brodeur can be reached at mbrodeur@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @MBrodeur.