9/22/23
9:00 am

Using Timers On Your iPhone With iOS 17

You can now have multiple timers with labels. You can start them in the Clock app or using Control Center. You can also control them on your Lock Screen.

You can also watch this video at YouTube (but with ads).

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you how you can set Timers in iOS 17 including the ability to have multiple timers going at once. 
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Now Timers in the Clock App on your iPhone have been around since the beginning. But new functionality in iOS 17 means that you can have multiple timers set now. So things have changed a little bit. 
Let's go into the Clock App and it's going to take you to whatever screen you're on last time. So, here I'm on the World Clock. Let's go to Timers at the bottom right. Now I can set a timer and you can use these little wheels here to set the number of hours, the numbers of minutes, and the number of seconds. You have a start button there but before you tap the Start button you may want to set a label. Now that you can have multiple timers it's much more useful to have a label there so you remember what each timer is for. So, for instance, if I want to complete a work task in like 15 minutes I may want to label it so I remember what the timer is for when it actually goes off or when I check the amount of time remaining. 
Once I've set a label the next thing I want to do is determine what happens when the time ends. Usually that means playing a sound which can be one of the ring tones that you have on your iPhone. So you can go through all the different ring tones that are there, set it each time you select one it's actually going to play that sound so you'll hear it. But the last option here is Stop Playing. That's a special feature there. That will actually stop the Music App or Podcast App from playing. So you can use this as a sleep timer. So you can listen to music or a podcast as you're going to sleep knowing that it will shut off after, say, 15 minutes. Then you tap Set here and now you've set what happens when the Timer ends. 
Now all that is left to do is Start it. So you tap the Start button there and now you can see the Timer at the top of the list of timers here. You've got a Pause button and a Play button. You've got the label right underneath the time. If you didn't put a label it will actually give you the total amount of time. So here it would have said 15 minutes instead of Work Task. 
Now you can actually go and add another timer. To do that you would tap the Plus button at the top right. You have the same set of controls. So let's set a timer here for a hour. I'll give it a different label, like that. Maybe I'll choose a different sound to play. Notice there are preset times on this screen. This only appears if you are on the screen  after tapping that Plus button. It is a shame it is not there on the initial screen. Maybe that will be true in a future update. So you can choose one of these presets and it will set the time to that. You can also tap Recents here. We will look at Recents in a minute. So I'll start this timer and now you can see I've got two timers going. I can Pause and Resume them independently of each other. 
If I want to change the label of one I can. Tap it and it will go into this special screen that just shows you the Timer. There's a big circle that shows you the amount of time that has elapsed. So this orange line will disappear as time goes on. You've got the time in the middle and you have the current end time for this. So if I don't Pause this anymore this is when this timer will finish. Now I can also Cancel the timer here. Same as deleting it. But I could change the name of the timer and change it to something else. Even change what is going to happen when the timer is done. So now when I go back to the List of Timers I can see the new name is there. 
Now Recents allows you to start a Timer based on a previous timer. So, for instance, if this Work Task is something I do all the time then this Timer will remain in my Recents. The Recents List can get pretty long. I can simply tap it to start a new timer at that amount of time with that label. So an easy way to recreate Timers. You don't have to start every timer by specifying a time and details just from scratch. The Recents List is very useful. 
Now to remove a Timer I can, of course, go into it and tap Cancel. But I can also just swipe to the left and Delete it and it gets rid of it. One interesting note here. Notice that though I changed the name of this Timer, Recents still has the old name. I found that if I Pause and then Resume the Timer it actually adds this Timer with the updated label there. Now if I want to get rid of this one you can easily get rid of one of the Recents by swiping to the left and Deleting. So you can kind of keep your Recents List clean. If you know you are not going to reuse a timer you can get it out of the Recents List and then leave the ones in there that are what you might use again. 
Note the List here is always going to be in the order of Time Remaining. So the first timer that is going to expire should be here at the top. You can also go to Edit here and use the little Delete button to remove timers and Recents. 
When you have timers going if you go to your Lock Screen, and I'll do that by dragging down here at the top of the screen, you're going to get this live Widget now in iOS 17 that will allow you to see the amount of time remaining, see a label. Now you can Pause it and Resume it if you have one timer going. Then those buttons work right away. Otherwise you have a stack here and you have to expand the stack first. I can Pause this one and Resume it and I can say Cancel this one, for instance. So you can deal with these existing timers right here on the Lock Screen. If your phone is unlocked you can simply tap over here to the right and it will take you right to the Clock App. 
Now I can work with Timers in the Control Center here as well. In Control Center there is a Timer's button. Now if I tap and hold here it brings up this screen that shows me the current Timer, the one that's closest to being done, and the amount of time left. I can Pause it and Resume it. If I tap the Plus button here it takes me to the Timer App. 
Now let's go and set this up like there is no timers going at all. So I have removed that last timer. So now when I go to Control Center here and I can see that the Timer button isn't active any more. There is no current timer. So if I tap this it just takes me to the Timer's App. If I tap and hold it takes me to the special screen where I can start a new Timer. So I can drag this up or down.  Go to a specific time. Notice those presets were the same as what we saw on a previous screen, tap Start. So now I've got this Timer going right here. Set for 20 minutes. I can Pause it and Resume it. This screen really works best if you only have one Timer going. If you actually change this it does something very strange. I'll change it to 5 minutes and release. You can see the Timer changes to 5 minutes. Let's go into the Timer App and see what has happened. We can see that the previous Timer was changed to 5 minutes and it also started a new Timer.  It probably is not supposed to do that. So I'd only use that special screen to start a new Timer if you have no Timers currently going. 
There's one more way that you can start a Timer with a label. That is just to use Siri. Start a Timer named Meditation for 10 minutes. (Siri: 10 minute meditation timer counting down). You could also stop Timer's using that label. Stop the Meditation Timer. So what I would do now, once you have iOS 17, go into the Clock App and try creating some different Timers. Look at all the different settings. Get to know the interface so that when you need to make a Timer you already know how to use it. 
Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 24 Responses to “Using Timers On Your iPhone With iOS 17”

Greg

1 year ago

Great for baking and cooking too

Carol

1 year ago

I can't wait for ios17 to drop. The labelled multiple timers will be really handy for cooking and exercises. Thanks again Gary for posting such informative content.

Gary Rosenzweig

1 year ago

Carol: iOS 17 is here. It came out on Monday.

Paul

1 year ago

Unlinke your example where Siri creates a new timer, I can't find a way to start an existing timer with a name. Siri always asks "For how long?"

Gary Rosenzweig

1 year ago

Paul: Did you try saying exactly what I said?

Paul

1 year ago

To me, the only real improvement to timers would be to turn on a previously named timer; one that was * already in the Recent category *. Siri doesn't seem to be able to accomplish that task, or I didn't find the method. Your example works fine as you stated, but your example is always creating a * new named timer. * I expected to say to Siri, "Siri. Start the PAINT timer." Siri always replies, "For how long?"

SAA

1 year ago

With ios 17, the timer no longer displays what time it will end. All it does is count down. Is there a way to get this feature back?

Gary Rosenzweig

1 year ago

SAA: In the Clock app, tap on the timer and it takes you to the screen with all of that.

Dina

1 year ago

had the same question, how can we display the time when the timer ends as it used to show before?

Gary Rosenzweig

1 year ago

Dina: Not sure what you mean. When the timer ends, the time remaining is 0. There's nothing to see. If you want to reuse the timer, then screen down and it is under "Recents." SAA asked "what time it will end" which is different. You can see that by tapping on the timer entry in the app on the Timers screen and going to the screen that shows that Timer and all of its information.

Jessica N.

1 year ago

Same question as SAA. Ever since this update, it doesn't display the end time when you add the minutes for the timer. Very inconvenient. Is there a way to see the end time when you set a timer? Ever since the update, I now have to go into the clock, into timers and click the time left to see what the end time is.

Gary Rosenzweig

1 year ago

Jessica: You have the solution. But if you want it shown elsewhere as well, send feedback to Apple.

Jessica N.

1 year ago

Obviously, I know where I can get the answer. I was asking if there was an easier way without the additional clicks.

Subss

1 year ago

Yes you CAN still see the time of day when the timer ends. Say you have a number of recent timers. And you click on the green arrow for one so the timer starts, it then moves up to the top. Now click on that running timer and it will open to like half screen size, and here you can see the time of day when the timer ends, like you could before.

Personally I really hate this new multiple timers thing, and I wish there was an option to turn it off and go back to the way it was before!

Jane

1 year ago

I’ve always used the timer function as a really flexible alarm clock that I can adjust easily with changing conditions (I have kids), and not having the end time there and obvious is really messing me up.
And why is the phone saving every previous timer?? How is that useful in any way? It’s just a confusing jumble of old timers that I have to keep deleting. I hate this so much! Why can’t it ASK before saving a timer in the list, or have a save button?

Gary Rosenzweig

1 year ago

Jane: you can still see it, just has to allow for a list of timers now. And don’t think of them as “saved” timers, they are just recent times you used. Nothing more complex than that. Just ignore them if you don’t want to use them.

RSaunders

1 year ago

Well, iOS17 users, welcome to something iWatch users have been complaining about for 2 years. Apple tkinks you need a list of recent timers, so you can reuse them. If you don't need that clutter, too bad. Someone at Apple likes the feature and now we all get it. I wish there was a switch to turn this off, but 2 years of wishing didn't get iWatch users a switch.

R A Campbelle

12 months ago

Gary, you seem to be purposely misunderstanding the question or basically insisiting that all these people shouldn't be irritated at the save timer thing. IT'S VERY ANNOYING; and a lot of people seem to agree with me. Why can't you just give the right response, which is "Okay; I see that people don't like this so-called 'feature' and will advocate that Apple remove it"?
Also, why can't you see that requiring extra steps and extra clicxks in order to see when the timer ends is NOT an improvement?

Gary Rosenzweig

12 months ago

RA: I aim to explain things and solve problems. I don't (and have no power to) "advocate" for anything. When I respond it is with the aim to help people get things done on their Mac. I already commented about sending feedback to Apple about this.

Joel

11 months ago

At 3:07 of your video, you tap on the small timer circle and it becomes the large timer circle. I prefer the large timer circle.
Is there any way to set the timer so that when you click start, it automatically gives you the large circle timer, without having to first click on the small timer circle. Also, when I'm using the large timer circle and click pause, it automatically reverts to the small circle timer. I only want to use the large circle timer, never the small circle timer.
Thanks,
Joel

Gary Rosenzweig

11 months ago

Joel: I don't think you can change it. This is to support multiple timers.

Mary Ann Mullane

9 months ago

I accidentally deleted the timer from the Home Screen on my iPhone 10 Pro Max IOS 17.4. How do I get it back? Pausing and restarting the timer doesn’t work.

Mary Ann Mullane

9 months ago

Update: my iPhone is a 13 Pro Max not a 10.

Gary Rosenzweig

9 months ago

Mary Ann: If all you did was remove it from your Home Screen (not delete it) then just go to the last screen of your Home Screen (the library list of apps), search for it there, and then tap and hold and select the option to add it back to the Home Screen.

Comments Closed.

Using Timers On Your iPhone With iOS 17

Comments: 24 Responses to “Using Timers On Your iPhone With iOS 17”

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