How to Change the Default Snooze Time on Your iPhone Alarm

Turning on snooze won’t help you much if you fall asleep again, but it will help you wake up more smoothly. However, your iPhone’s default nine-minute pause might be too long or too short for your preference. If you tend to fall asleep quickly, a two-minute nap may help.

In case you’re wondering, old school mechanical watches had physical limitations that prevented them from using 10 minutes as their snooze time, so nine minutes was set as the default since 11 minutes didn’t seem punctual enough. After all, digital clocks continued the 9-minute snooze trend as watch faces fell out of fashion, and Apple likely decided to keep the snooze time tradition on iPhone alarms. If it’s been running since the 50s, why change it?

However, if you usually don’t sleep well or fall asleep again when you hit the snooze button, you’re more likely to fall back asleep at the start of your sleep cycle. The initial stage promotes deep sleep, so when you wake up due to an alarm, you feel more tired than before. This is where shorter naps come in handy so you don’t fall asleep again and feel more tired.

How to change the default snooze time

I have bad news: you can’t change the snooze time in the Clock app. This has been asked many, many times since the iPhone became a thing, but the nine-minute snooze tradition wins every time. Apple could have easily set an alarm for an individual snooze time, but that hasn’t happened and likely won’t happen anytime soon. However, you can try any of the alternatives below to get this functionality or simulate it.

Use jailbreak tweak

If you’re lucky enough to jailbreak, you can use a jailbreak app like Snooze by Julian Weiss ($0.99), Sleeper by Joshua Seltzer ($0.99), Snooze++ by Aryamaan (free), or Aurore by (1. 99 USD). You’ll want to use one that is compatible, or at least works, with your current version of iOS.

Aurora’s preferences include the number of repeats, time, volume, and more. Image by iGeek Teach Tech/ YouTube

Set an alarm with a 9-minute snooze

If you haven’t jailbroken or don’t want to jailbreak, you need to get a little creative. One thing you can try is syncing other alarms with a nine-minute snooze. Let’s say you want the snooze interval to be around four to five minutes. If you want your alarm to start ringing at 6:00 AM, set another alarm for 6:04 AM and that’s it.

When you snooze these two alarms by pressing Snooze on the lock screen, one of the volume buttons, or the side button (the Home button silences the alarm), the subsequent alarms you can snooze will go off: 6:09, 6:13, 6: 18, 6:22, 6:27, 6:31 and so on.

Of course, this works in an ideal world where you hit the snooze button right after the alarm goes off. If you wait a minute or two, it resets everything. If this is similar to what you would do, you can try the next option.

Use an alarm instead of a snooze

While you can’t change the default snooze time in the Clock app for an alarm, you can turn off snooze. But that doesn’t make any sense, right? Well, by turning off snooze, you can manually create your own snooze buttons as new alarms.

On the Alarm tab, add a new alarm using the + button, or edit the alarm you want to change. Make sure Snooze is disabled on the edit screen, then set all alarms at five minute intervals (or whatever time you want).

When you press stop on the lock screen, one of the volume buttons or the side button or the home button, it is actually like pressing snooze as you have another alarm queued up for snooze.

Make it easier for you to wake up

If you tend to hug your iPhone in the morning and squeeze the buttons whenever an alarm goes off to snooze it right away, you’re not doing yourself any favors. Hold iPhone further than arm’s length to make alarms and snoozes more effective. Thus, you will have to get up to stop or snooze the alarm.

Taking it one step further, you can enable LED flash alerts that will flash bright lights on your face from the rear LED flash, which can wake you up even more. Go to Settings->Accessibility->Hearing->Audio/Video, then turn on the toggle for Flash LED for Alerts. It will provide pop-up alerts for more than just alarms, so you can disable “Flash on Silent”so you can at least set your iPhone to silent and not get flash alerts when you don’t need them.

Set up automation

The Shortcuts app has a Snooze automation trigger for the Clock alarm, and you can use it to trigger an action or series of actions every time you snooze an alarm. To stay on topic with this article, let’s just set up an automation that creates and sets a new alarm every time you snooze your main alarm. The duration between the time you snooze the alarm and the new alarm can be whatever you want.

The easiest way to set up automation is to select Alarm as the trigger and then set it to Snooze. You can apply it to any alarm, or just wake up or existing alarms. Click next.

Now add a “Date”action followed by a “Set Date”action and set the latter to add the amount of time you want, like four minutes. Then add a “Create Alarm”action, make sure it uses “Adjusted Date”as the time, name it if you like, and click “Next”to save.

Turn off “Ask before launch”and confirm your choice by selecting “Don’t ask”in the prompt. Click Finish and your automation is ready. Whenever you snooze an alarm, it will create another alarm at the time you selected, and this will continue until you stop snoozing alarms.

Keep in mind that this can create clutter in the Clock app, so you may need to clean it up from time to time. You can try adding automation to turn off the alarms you snooze so you know exactly how many minutes pass between each alarm sound.

Just use another alarm clock app

If none of the above sounds good, the best thing you can do is find another alarm clock app until Apple one day adds custom snoozes to its Clock app (don’t hold your breath). I’ve checked tons of free alarm clock apps on the iOS App Store and all of the options below allow you to customize the snooze time.

• Nightstand: You can set the time to 3, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 or 30 minutes.
• Sleep Cycle Alarm: You can set the snooze duration to 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 9, 10, 15 or 20 minutes. There is also a “Smart”option that automatically adjusts the snooze time.
• Alarm clock for me – wake up! : You can set the snooze duration from 1 to 60 minutes (in one minute increments).
• Smart Alarm Wake Up: You can set the snooze interval to 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, or 45 minutes.

Nightstand (left), “Sleep Cycle”(center), and “Alarm Clock for Me”(right).

• Loud alarm – LOUDEST: You can set the snooze duration to 2, 5, 9, 10, 15 or 30 minutes.
• Alarm – Joyful Alarm: You can set the snooze duration to 1, 3, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 45 or 60 minutes.
• Alarm HD: You can set the snooze interval from 1 to 20, 25, 30, 45 or 60 minutes.
• Snooze Timer app: You can set a snooze timer from 1 to 60 minutes (in one minute increments).

Loud alarm clock (left), alarm clock (center), and alarm clock HD (right).

These are just a few of the free options available on the App Store. You can always browse the one you like and then check it out to see if it has the right snooze customization options for you. The worst thing you can do is uninstall the app and try something else.

However, keep in mind that some (but not all) of these alarm clock apps may require your iPhone’s screen to remain on at night for best performance.