Vibration has the same effect on me. Waking up in general is a not very nice experience most of the time. Weighted blanket helped a little but it's still kind of stressful.

There’s a lot of alarm sound choices on iOS that aim to be a bit more gradual rather than something like a fire alarm. Mine sounds a bit like some distant music that gradually gets closer.

I have a very slow and long chill song, set to increase volume one step every 5-10 seconds. It takes a good two minutes of playing to max the volume (the song lasts like 7min). I'm almost always awake before it reaches max, and never with a jump scare.

Perhaps counter intuitive, but setting multiple alarms does this.

If you set multiple alarms you are training yourself that it's okay to snooze an alarm because another one will come. This then becomes habit.

If you have a single alarm, you can't ignore it if you don't want to fuck up your day (and if it wouldn't, don't set an alarm in the first place and wake up naturally)

I used to sleep through my 5 alarms, literally switching to a single alarm fixed it

I'm the opposite. If I set an alarm, chances are I'll wake up before the alarm.

Then i'll use the phone for a while, cancel the alarm and likely fall asleep again.

Same. Sometimes I can hear the alarm in my dream and be like "damn what's this sound? it's really annoying" and still not wake up. If I was a caveman, I'd probably be dead by now