How do you get your iPhone to announce the time every 15 minutes?

Set a talking clock app to a 15-minute interval and press start. In Voice Clock you choose the interval, choose whether announcements follow the clock or start counting from when you press Start, and tap Start. It keeps speaking in the background with the screen locked, lowers your music while it talks, and stays silent during Quiet Hours.

I build Voice Clock, the app this article is about, so weigh my suggestions with that in mind.

Why every 15 minutes

An hourly chime is easy to ignore, and every minute is too much for most people. A quarter hour is short enough to notice time passing during focused work, a long chore or getting ready in the morning, and long enough not to become noise. People who search for “app that announces time every 15 minutes” usually want exactly that middle ground.

Interval or clock-aligned

• Clock-aligned: announcements follow the clock instead of the moment you pressed Start. Check in the app how it lines up with your chosen interval.
• Interval: the count starts when you press Start. Useful for a session of exercise or study where you care about elapsed time.

Pick clock-aligned for a day-long rhythm and interval for a single activity.

The 64 limit, and how to avoid it

iOS limits how many scheduled announcements an app can queue to start on their own: 64. At four an hour, that covers 16 hours. For quarter-hour announcements all day, tap Start instead, which runs announcements in the background without relying on that queue.

Making it livable

1. Set Quiet Hours so nights stay silent.
2. Keep music on. Voice Clock lowers it while speaking, then brings it back.
3. Change the voice if the default grates: record your own (up to 20 seconds), upload a sound or write a custom message.
4. On Apple Watch you get a haptic tap before the time.

Voice Clock is free to download, with optional premium features.

Read next: make your iPhone announce the time every minute or hour and hourly chime on iPhone and Apple Watch.