Sync your iPhone alarms to an Apple Watch

I’ve written before about the concept of presence. This is the notion that in your digital life, you have many devices—sometimes several near you1—and when you get an alert, a phone call, or other call to action, you do not want every single piece of hardware to chime, shake, or grab you by the scruff of your neck.2

And yet. And yet. When you desperately want the digital jingle bell to sound off on a particular device, my goodness, what a fuss that might be.

Quick: Without picking up your iPhone, tell me how you configure an alarm in the Clock app to trigger on your Apple Watch when you’re wearing it? I can’t remember, and I just looked it up.

While Settings: Notifications controls many ways in which your iPhone lets you know something is up that you wanted to be reminded about—or a company wanted to tell you about—you will scroll through your app list in vain: there’s no Clock app listed or alarm settings.

Instead, naturally (?), go to Settings: Apps: Clock: Notifications. After my recent brain failure related to the Video menu in the macOS Phone app, I looked through the entire Settings: Notifications list. Nope, no Clock. Yet, Settings: Apps: Clock: Notifications.

Despite the Notifications label at the top, this is found only through the Clock app’s settings (left). At right, use the Watch app to set iPhone clock Push Alert sync. Got it?

And even when you arrive there, there’s no Apple Watch! So let’s visit the Watch app. One assumes there’s an easy way to figure out how to turn iPhone-set alarms on or off on your Apple Watch. In fact, there is, but the language is rather obscure. At Notifications: Clock, use the Push Alerts from iPhone control to turn this feature on or off:

When this is on, Apple Watch will alert you of Timers and Alarms you’ve set on your iPhone, so you can snooze or dismiss them remotely.

“Push Alerts” isn’t my first thought for syncing alarms and timers, but at least it’s there.

Just remember to keep your Apple Watch charged and unlocked on your body.

[Got a question for the column? You can email glenn@sixcolors.com or use /glenn in our subscriber-only Discord community.]

You’re never more than ten feet from a spider, or one foot from an Apple device. ↩

Scruff attachment sold separately. ↩