How To Change The Snooze Time On Iphone

Why The iPhone Snooze Time Is 9 Minutes Long (& How To Change It)

Snoozing an iPhone alarm silences it for 9 minutes — but why? Here's a closer look at the story behind the 9-minute snooze and how to change it.

Setting an alarm on Apple's iPhone is one of the most basics tasks someone can do — but it also comes with an interesting quirk. Snoozing an iPhone alarm silences it for exactly 9 minutes before it starts ringing again. That may seem like an odd number at first, but there's actually a legit reason why Apple picked that number specifically.

Although it may be one of the simplest apps available for the iPhone, the Clock application is also incredibly useful. It can show the current time in different parts of the world, begin a stopwatch, start a timer, and — of course — create an alarm to help someone wake up in the morning. Starting in iOS 14, Apple upgraded the alarm experience to help users follow set bedtimes and get enough sleep each night.

Regardless if someone sets a special sleep alarm or a regular one, the fact remains that snoozing an iPhone alarm does so for 9 minutes. As explained in a YouTube video byApple Explained, there is sound logic behind this seemingly random number. When the snooze feature was being added to alarm clocks years ago, it was done so by retrofitting the new snooze component in the design of an existing clock. AsApple Explainedsays,"This was a problem, since they [alarm clock makers] couldn't adjust the clock's gear teeth to line up perfectly for a ten-minute snooze."This left them with a decision to have the snooze feature silence clocks for 10 minutes and 43 seconds or 9 minutes and 3 seconds. 9 minutes was ultimately chosen as the best option, and while the reasoning is still debated to this day, it's the snooze time that was used on the GE Snooz-Alarm in 1956 — the first alarm clock with a snooze feature available to the general public. The 9-minute snooze has remained as the default snooze time on alarm clocks since then, and wanting to pay homage to that tradition, Apple also chose to use it for the iPhone's alarm.

How To Change iPhone Snooze Time

While that's certainly a nice bit of history to know, a 9-minute snooze may not work for everyone's schedule. Unfortunately, Apple doesn't allow users to adjust this. Instead, the best workaround is to set multiple alarms to create custom 'snooze' times. If someone sets their main alarm for 6:00 AM and wants a 5-minute snooze, they could create other alarms for 6:05, 6:10, 6:15, etc. It'd be a lot easier if Apple offered an edit snooze feature, but until then, this is the next best thing.

The other option is to download a third-party alarm app. There areplentyof options to choose from on the App Store, including Alarmy, Alarm Clock HD, Sleep Cycle, etc. It's a bit hilarious iPhone owners need to download a separate app just to edit the snooze for their alarm, but such is life. Apple may eventually update iOS to change this, but today is not that day.

Next: How To Turn iPhone Location Services On Or Off

Source: Apple Explained

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About The Author

Joe Maring (1150 Articles Published)

Joe has been actively writing and talking about consumer tech since 2012. His biggest passion lies with smartphones, but he's happy to talk your ear off about just about anything with a CPU. He lives in Kalamazoo, MI with his wife, two cats, and pit bull/boxer mix.