Using Multiple Clock Timers On Your Mac

A new feature in macOS 14.2 is the ability to set more than one timer in the Clock app. You can name the timers and also reuse recent ones without needing to recreate them from scratch.

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you how to set multiple timers on your Mac. 
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You can now set multiple timers in the Clock App on your Mac. You have to be using macOS Sonoma 14.2 or newer. Let's launch the Clock App and in the Clock App you've got the same four sections as before. World Clock, Alarms, Stop Watch, and Timers. If you go to Timers it doesn't look too different at first. You've got Hours, Minutes, and Seconds here and you can set it to whatever you want. So I could do zero hours, 15 minutes, and zero seconds. You can set a sound to play when the timer is over or choose Stop Playing which will stop the Music or Podcast App so you can use it as a Sleep Timer. 
One difference though is a Name field. Now you can name a timer. So, for instance, if this is the timer for something I've got cooking I can name it Cooking here. Then you can start the timer. Then it looks like it did before. You've got the countdown here. You've got the time when this will end and you've got the sound here. You can change that if you want. You've got this circle and the circle will change as the time goes on. Now you've got this new name field which you can change here if you like. You can Pause or Cancel the timer here. 
But in addition to that you've got this Plus Button here at the top right. This was actually here with macOS Sonoma but it was inactive for timers before. Now you can click it and you can create a new timer. So, you can choose Custom Timer or Preset. You can see all these Presets here. You can also choose Recents. Let's choose Custom Timer and it is going to allow you to create a new timer but with a slightly different interface here. So let's do a one hour timer here and we'll call this something else, Take a Break. We can set a different sound if we like. We can click Start. 
Now things change. Now the Timer section actually shows you a list of current running timers here at the top. Underneath it you see a bunch of Recents. So you can easily start a new timer with one of these recently used times and names. So I can now Pause one of these, if I like, and continue it. I can cancel it right here with this little X button, like that. I can easily start another timer. So, for instance, I can restart this one here. I'll just click the Play button there and you can see it adds it there to the list. 
Another thing to notice is that here in the Menu Bar you can see the Timer just as before. It's going to show you the Timer that is closest to ending. So, in this case I see that 15 minute timer here, even though there are two timers going. I can still use it like before to quickly click on it and get to the Timer section here. For each one of these I can alter it by clicking on it. So, even though this is the second timer, I can click it and go into it. Now I get this big view of it if I want. I can change the name. I can change the sound that it's going to play. I can Pause. I can Cancel. I can use the Back button here at the top left to go back to this main screen that shows me all of the different Timers. 
Then even if I cancel all these timers or I've just let them expire I still have Recents if I scroll down on the screen. It shows me my recently set timers including the name I used. So if I commonly use this one hour Take a Break timer I will have it here in Recents and I don't have to set it up with a name and a sound and all of that. I can just use the Play button here and it will Start this new timer. If I want to rename it I can rename it at this point and then I would see this new one with a new name in the Favorites Section. If I look here I can also Remove Recents. So I can remove, say, this one and this one if I never think I will use those again and this section may be getting crowded. 
So some things to note. It doesn't seem that Siri can handle these multiple timers yet if you ask it to start a timer. It will start a new timer. "Start a 15 minute timer", Siri - 15 minutes, counting down. If I ask her for another one "Start a 30 minute timer. Siri -There's already a 15 minute timer." So you can see here it is not quite doing what I want it to do. I wanted it to create a new timer. Siri doesn't seem to understand that yet. So Siri is not up to speed on this and neither is the Shortcuts App. If you want to try to use the started timer action in Shortcuts, it won't add an additional timer. It will replace what is already there. As a matter of fact if you have multiple timers running and you use that shortcut it replaces them all with the same time. So definitely not working yet with Shortcuts or with Siri. You can still start that first timer with Siri but if you really want to use the multiple timer functionality for now you've got to go into the Timer App to do it.  
Multiple Timers can come in pretty handy. For instance here I've got one for taking a break from work. I'm also timing something I've got going on in the kitchen and I'm reminding myself that it is time to feed a parking meter. All with three different timers which had been impossible to do previously. This functionality was added to the iPhone and iPad with the update to iOS and iPad OS 17 earlier this year. It is great to see that the Mac Clock App is now on par with those. 
Hope you find it useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 14 Responses to “Using Multiple Clock Timers On Your Mac”

BillWilliam Braun

5 months ago

What will the "stop playing" stop? I tried a 15' time and had "stop playing" chosen and had my Music app playing, but the timer stoped, but the music did not. What does the 'stop playing" refer to?

Gary Rosenzweig

Bill: It should stop the Music app or the Podcasts app. Not sure why the Music app didn't stop for you. Maybe try it again.

Sheldon

Thanks bunchrs

gary

Great tutorial Gary

Bippie

Thank you, Gary, this update is really going to help me with the different schedules that I have in my job.

David

This is a great addition to macOS. One issue I do have is with the timer on my iPad Pro. I can not seem to adjust the volume and it is so low it is worthless. I've searched videos on line and nothing seems to work.

David: It should adhere to the general volume setting for your iPad as a whole. But maybe you have locked the ringer/alert volume in Settings, Sounds?

Darell

Thank you Gary. The one glaring miss for the timers (for my usage!) is a place to maintain permanent favorites. The recents is nice, but there are a core number of timers I use for baking that I would like to always be quickly accessible, and in a consistent order. If I use timer for other things between bakes, my necessary ones are shoved way down the list in awkward order.

Claudio Silvaggi

Thanks brother!

Andrea Grasselli

Thank you Gary, very useful!

Fred

Thanks! Great video.

Thom

4 months ago

Hi Gary. Thanks for the great podcasts you do. I was wondering why Siri could not start a new timer while one was running. I tried the same thing you did by asking Siri to start a timer. Same result. Siri balked. Then I asked 'Siri, start a new timer' and it worked. Now I can tell Siri to start multiple timers. Just thought you might want to know this. Thanks again for your great podcasts.

Thom: Thanks. Yes, I tried dozens of combinations until I was convinced it just wasn't possible. But I guess I didn't try that one.

Jerry

I have a Siri Shortcut on my phone that plays a playlist at bedtime. I have a “Start a timer for 30 minutes” command in the shortcut, and it uses the “Stop Playing” option for “When Timer Ends”. But that’s only because “Stop Playing” is the last one I’ve used. if I ever accidentally change that to play a sound, I’ll break my shortcut. I wish there was a way for the shortcut to always use “Stop Playing” explicitly.

Using Multiple Clock Timers On Your Mac

Comments: 14 Responses to “Using Multiple Clock Timers On Your Mac”

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