Everybody needs a few more minutes of sleep now and then. In fact, I can’t think of a single alarm clock that doesn’t have a snooze button. But how long should snooze last? That depends on the person. Apple, however, seems to think otherwise—iPhone users quickly realize there’s no way to change the snooze duration. That’s because the option simply doesn’t exist. Here’s what you can do instead.
Can I Change the Snooze Time on iOS?
You read that right. Complex tasks like artificial intelligence, recording ultra-high-definition videos, or displaying detailed 3D graphics, are a breeze for iPhones. Changing the time between alarm snoozes? Sorry, no can do.
This situation reminds me of how iPad users had to wait almost 15 years to have a stock Calculator app. Sometimes Apple decides its customers won’t be allowed to do something and nobody is able to change its mind.
Until iOS 18.3, at least, and likely for a long time yet, iPhones are stuck with fixed 9-minute snoozes. Well, there’s an option to disable snoozes completely, too, but that’s it.
Change Snooze Time on iPhone: Alternatives To Try
There’s no amount of stubbornness a multibillion-dollar corporation can have that its users can’t have more. So, if you don’t want Apple telling you how much you’re allowed to oversleep, try the methods below.
1. Use a Third-Party Alarm App
For starters, you can simply install an alarm clock not made by Apple. Snooze times set in stone aren’t even the main reason to do that, to be fair. For nine months now, Apple has been promising to fix alarms that simply don’t go off across multiple iOS versions.
The lack of features is another issue. The iOS Clock app doesn’t tell how long you have from enabling an alarm to it going off, for instance. Pausing a recurring alarm for a day or two? Also no. It’s either on or off. You’ll have to look elsewhere if you want your alarm to gradually increase its volume when going off, too.
The most popular third-party iOS alarm app is Alarmy. As of when this article is being written, it ranks #54 in the Lifestyle category on the App Store. I’m surprised it isn’t ranked higher, actually.
Alarmy has some additional features, too, like requiring you to solve a puzzle for the alarm to stop. You can also set a snooze duration between one and 60 minutes. Good if you want to sleep more, good if you want to be prevented from sleeping more.
If you need motivation to wake up on time, Nuj is another good option. It works similarly to Alarmy, requiring you to solve a challenge within a set time. Instead of playing the sound indefinitely, however, Nuj charges you a fee if you don’t complete the challenge. The money goes to a charity of your choice (Khan Academy by default).
2. Manually Create Alarms To Replace Snooze
If you’re reading this article, however, you’re likely more interested in sleeping more than in sleeping less. In this case, I’ll share a makeshift technique I’ve been successfully using for a couple of years.
Firstly, define how much you want your snooze to last. For the example below, I chose 15 minutes. Then, do the following:
Time needed: 5 minutes
- Open the Clock app (the stock one, no need to download a third-party clock). Create a few alarms, evenly spaced between them, with the exact duration of your desired snooze.
- For each alarm, disable the regular snooze by turning off the Snooze toggle. This ensures there’s a single button to tap on the alarm screen, so you don’t hit Snooze while sleepy
.
- That’s it! When you manage to actually wake up, just disable the remaining alarms. Since you can’t temporarily disable alarms on iOS, remember to re-enable them before going to bed!
It’s almost unbelievable that iPhone users pay hundreds of dollars and can’t have basic features like changing the snooze time. Even more when you think these devices can make contactless payments, satellite phone calls, exchange multimedia messages, and so on. Even if it requires improvised methods or third-party apps, at least there are a few ways of escaping this.