I rarely have reasons to complain about the Galaxy and One UI experiences, but it happens. And when it does, it's often because of an issue that I believe could be addressed with relative ease and, for whatever reason, hasn't been.

My latest gripe is related to the Samsung Clock app and, consequently, Google Clock and Gemini. What I want is simple, but neither app can deliver. I need to set a YouTube Music playlist as an alarm clock, yet both Samsung Clock and Google Clock fail at this simple task. And Gemini? Forget about it.

First, Samsung Clock lets you set Bixby or Spotify as an alarm sound. Despite the close partnership between Samsung and Google, Samsung Clock doesn't support YouTube Music. Then again, it doesn't even support Samsung's own Music app, so I suppose my expectations are too high?

What's the alternative? I could use Spotify, but I switched to YouTube Music when I decided to get YouTube Premium to avoid ads, and I don't want another music service.

I thought I could fix this problem once I learned that Google Clock does allow you to set YouTube Music playlists as an alarm sound. Unfortunately, I ran into another issue. YouTube Music playlists set as alarm sounds in Google Clock always play shuffled, and I need my playlist to be played in sequence. It's supposed to be a morning alarm that gradually ramps up in intensity.

As a side note, I found this extremely ironic, given how unreliable shuffle is in YouTube Music otherwise, and given that the YouTube Music app never remembers your shuffle and repeat settings between sessions.

Okay, how about using the touch macro in Routines+ to record a macro and play a specific YouTube Music playlist when my morning alarm goes off? Well, I tried. It doesn't work. First, you can't set touch delays in the macro, except for the first screen tap, and YouTube Music doesn't always load pages at the same speed. Second, it doesn't work if your screen is locked, which mine certainly is in the morning even if I use Extend Unlock (which has a four hour limit).

How about using Gemini? Once again, I tried this too, but even though Gemini can set an alarm for you, it can't set a specific playlist as an alarm.

I must admit this irks me, especially when there is so much talk nowadays about personalization and user-tailored experiences enabled by AI. This is just disappointing.

I don't think I'm asking for much, especially when the framework appears to already exist, at least for the Google Clock app. But this turned into one of those unnecessarily long projects, and after every attempt I was met with failure. I might have to start looking into third-party alarm apps to solve my issue, but I get the feeling I'll run into other (or similar) problems.

After all these failed attempts, all I can do is hope that Samsung Clock will support YouTube Music eventually, or that Google Clock will let me turn off the shuffle option for YouTube Music playlist alarms. These seem the most viable options. I can't trust Gemini with the task.