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Alarm Clock Tips & Tricks
Can Alarm Clocks Be Fun?

Not only useful, but fun too.  How?  With keyboard shortcuts, ping alarms, alarm editing, and linking to web sounds.

The tips below cover both simple techniques and advanced features to help you avoid mistakes, save time, and get more value from your alarm clock setups.

What Is a Ping Me Alarm?

They are an instant way for you to have the alarm clock ping you in 5, 10, or 37 minutes, you decide.

We made this super easy so you can create a Ping Me alarm at any time during your day with two keystrokes/mouseclicks.

Everyone has a plan for their day and our alarm clocks helps with that, but they also can help with mini reminders for . . .

  • in 5 minutes→check oven
  • in 12 minutes→leave for meeting
  • in 45 minutes→take break
  • in 90 minutes→follow up on email
  • in 7 minutes→check upload
  • in 2 hours→wrap up task

We call these ping alarms.  Once it rings, it is removed.  The alarm clock's alarm schedule has priority, but these make your day more productive as something comes up and you need a reminder to deal with it in 20 minutes.  You don't want to get out your phone, open an app, type in a time, you just want to be pinged in 20 minutes.  All you have to do is type 20 and the ping alarm is set, and shown under the time display.  15 Minutes later if you want to kill the ping alarm, just type an x, a backspace, or click the icon and the ping alarm is gone.  Need ping to be moved out to 30 minutes from now, just type 30.  Done.

There is only one ping alarm at a time, if you set a new one, it replaces the current one.  The Ping can only be in the next 24 hours.  Need more alarms, you have 25 you can add to the alarm schedule easily, but the ping alarm is designed to be as simple as possible, I just need it now type of feature.

You can set a ping alarm by clicking the icon and selecting a time or typing in 7m 1h 3:35 or 8pm.

And even faster way is to just type.  The alarm clock listens to what you type, and after a second it tries to understand your ping request and immediately posts it for you.  The whole point is to let the alarm clock ping you as you request, without getting in your way, in a light-switch simple manner.

When typing you don't even need to add the m when you want a ping 1-99 minutes from now, just type the number and you're done.  Need to leave in 45 minutes, type 45, done.  Need to leave at 9:30, type in 930, done.

When a ping request is understood, the alarm clock plays a subtle tick sound to give you audible confirmation, and the ping alarm time is shown under the time display.

The ping alarm is set to the Bell played three times at 80% volume.  Want to change that?  You guessed it, you can in advanced settings.  Pro users can change the ping alarm to play another sound, or a sound accessible on the web.  And of course you can set the number of times to repeat the sound and the volume.

Flexibility when you want it, simplicity when you don't.

Common Uses for Our Multi-Alarm Clocks

  • Class schedules
  • Business hours and lunch breaks
  • Factory shifts throughout the day
  • Work and break periods for increased focus

Use Alarm Colors to Track Time Periods

Alarm colors let you understand the time at a glance.  You have 25 alarms available and each one can have a target time and a color.  As time passes, the display automatically changes color when a alarm is reached.  Your alarms don't have to have a sound, if you only want the title and color of the time display to change.

Use Keyboard Shortcuts for Speed

Default keyboard shortcuts allow you to accomplish a few things quickly . . .

  1. Show Seconds
    Press the keyboard S key to show seconds in the clock time display.  Great when you want to track something down to the last few seconds, stock trades, auction bids, etc.  Then press the S key again to turn seconds off again.
  2. Stop Alarm Sound
    You may have set longer alarm sounds to make sure you notice them.  Once noticed a quick press of the Escape or Pause key stops the alarm sound immediately.
  3. Cancel Pending Ping Me Alarm
    Did you set a 20 minute ping alarm to leave for a meeting, and 15 minutes later you are headed to the meeting?  Just tap the Backspace or X key and your ping alarm is immediately removed.

You can quickly change the keyboard shortcuts in Advanced Settings.  To get there click the Settings icon under the time display.  Then in Basic Settings click the Advanced Settings link in the upper right corner.  Scroll down the Advanced Settings until you see those starting with 'Key'.  Click on Key Stop Sound to edit that setting.  Here is what that edit popup looks like . . .

To add the Delete key just type that key on your keyboard and click the Save button.  That's it, you're done.

Web Accessible Sounds

You can customize your alarm sounds using audio from the web.  This allows you to use different sounds for different alarms.

Many websites offer thousands of free sound files you can use.  As long as the audio file is publicly accessible and supports browser playback (CORS-enabled), it can be used as an alarm sound.

Here are MP3 sound files on our website that illustrate this working:

Bell
https://timer123.com/demo/bell.mp3
Bongo Drums
https://timer123.com/demo/bongo-drums.mp3

You can paste either link in the alarm field of the Alarms Schedule.

Note: External audio files may vary in performance depending on how they are encoded and hosted.  Some may include silence at the start or end, or load slightly slower on first use, especially longer files.  For precise timing, we recommend using short, trimmed audio clips or the built-in Timer123 sounds.

Built-in Timer123 sounds are optimized for instant playback and seamless looping, with no gaps between cycles.

Customization

There are 50 settings you can set in the Basic and Advanced settings area.  You can then save a link to your configured alarm clock to come right back to it later.  Some great customization features include turning off the title and tagline, making the time display larger larger, using alarm colors you like, and the most powerful feature is replacing the background with an image.

Our Steampunk Alarm Clock is a good example of what's possible . . .

https://timer123.com/steampunk-alarm-clock.html

Save and Reuse Your Alarm Clock Setup

All of our alarm clocks allow you to save a link that has your configuration in the link.  You can then share that link with anyone and when they click on it they will see and experience our alarm clock the exact way that you set it up.  This makes it easy to reuse setups for recurring schedules or to share exact configurations with others.

View Your Settings Changes

You can instantly see what alarm clock settings you have adjusted by clicking on the share alarm clock icon under the time display.  When you click this you are presented with a popup that lists each setting you adjusted.

Get Started with Timer123

Try these tips using our free online alarm clocks: