Skip to main content
Home

Main navigation

  • Apps
  • Forum
  • Blog
    • Podcast
    • Guides
    • Hardware & Accessory Reviews
    • Bug Tracker
    • Developer Resources
  • Log in

Breadcrumb

  1. Home
  2. Guides

How to Hear the Time Every Minute

By Jessica Brown, 23 November, 2012

If you want a quick way to time something and you do not care about it being perfectly accurate but you do not want to have to go in to the clock app and set a timer, alarm or stopwatch, just single finger single tap on or swipe to the part of the statice bar that says the time. VoiceOver will say the time every minute. Note that because the iOS clock does not do seconds, when you first start timing, you will not know what second of the minute you are starting timing at, but after that you will get full minutes. Also, at the time you want to stop timing, you will not know what second it is at unless the timing stopps at the very end of the minute. However, all the minutes in the middle will be counted fully. The only ones that will not be counted are the ones at the beginning and end. So if you are trying to time something you will only be off by up to 120 seconds, which is 2 minutes. To make it stop, just single finger single tap on or single finger swipe to anywhere on the screen except for the part of the status bar that says the time and it will stop saying the time. Another thing you could use this for is to not lose track of time when you need to leave home or do something at a certain time. You will not lose track of time if your iOS device is constently telling you the time. To make sure this will work, leave your screen unlocked and set auto-lock to never.
Tags
iOS
Miscellaneous
iPad
iPhone
VoiceOver

Disclaimer

The article on this page has generously been submitted by a member of the AppleVis community. As AppleVis is a community-powered website, we make no guarantee, either express or implied, of the accuracy or completeness of the information.

Options

  • Log in or register to post comments

Comments

How to hear the time every minute.

By frank perry

10 years 3 months ago

Hi. Thank you for this discovery. Ok this works so no problems with that, be sure to have your auto lock set to never and in my case I still had to turn the phone now and then to stop the screen locking even with auto lock set to never. The thing is for the first minute you don't exactly get a full 60 seconds so 3 minutes could actually turn out to be nearly 4, because you have to hear voice over say the time 3 times for 3 minutes, or it could be 3 minutes 22 seconds. Again, this is a brilliant feature and I've learnt something new about my iPhone so thank you for this guide, but if you want exact timers, the clock and timers are still the way to go.

I never thought of that first minute thing

By Jessica Brown

10 years 3 months ago

I am sorry! I guess I did not think about that first minute thing when I made the guide. I guess the only way you would get the whole minute the first time around would be if you started timeing on the first second of the minute, but because the clocks on the iOS devices do not display seconds, you can not be sure at what second in the minute you are starting at. If you do not care about exact time then I think it is still a good way to measure time approximately.

I have revised the guide

By Jessica Brown

9 years 6 months ago

In reply to I never thought of that first minute thing by Jessica Brown

Hi. Thank you to everyone who gave feedback on this guide. I have revised it based on your feedback and I hope it is more useful and easier to understand now.

More Like This

How to Change Screen Lock Time on iOS (Podcast)
Screen Auto-Locks While VoiceOver is Reading Text (iOS or iPadOS Bug Report)
unable to play Audible/Tune-In Radio from locked screen. (Forum Topic)
Authentication is not responding (Forum Topic)
Aeromatic (iOS and iPadOS App Directory)
Rockbox on older iPod Nano (Forum Topic)
Apple Releases iOS 8.1.1 with Fixes for Blind and Low Vision Users (Blog Post)
Haptic Time in watchOS 7 (Forum Topic)

Site Information

  • About
  • Club AppleVis
  • FAQ
  • Contact

Unless stated otherwise, all content is copyright AppleVis. All rights reserved. © 2023 | Accessibility | Terms | Privacy