Can your iPhone announce the time every minute or every hour?

You can't turn this on in Settings. Apple gives the Mac an "Announce the time" option and gives Apple Watch hourly chimes, but iPhone has nothing that speaks the time on a schedule. People have been asking about it on Apple's own support forum and on Reddit for years, and the answers land in the same place: ask Siri, build something in Shortcuts, or install an app.

I build one of those apps, so take my ranking with that in mind. I'll go through the free routes first, because for some people they're enough.

Option 1: Ask Siri

"Hey Siri, what time is it?" works with the phone in your pocket and AirPods in. It's on-demand only. If you lose track of time because you forget to check, Siri won't help, because you have to remember to ask.

Option 2: A Shortcuts automation

In the Shortcuts app, open Automation, add a Time of Day trigger, and give it a Speak Text action that reads the current date formatted as a time. Set it to run without asking.

The catch is that one automation fires at one time of day. For an announcement every hour from 7:00 to 22:00 you'd build sixteen of them. For every five minutes during your morning, you'd build dozens. It's free and it works, but it's fiddly to set up and annoying to change.

Option 3: Apple Watch chimes and Speak Time

On Apple Watch, Settings › Clock › Chimes plays a sound on the hour, and Speak Time reads the time aloud when you hold two fingers on the watch face. The chime tells you an hour has passed. It doesn't tell you which hour, which is the part people with a busy morning tend to need.

Option 4: A talking clock app

This is the route most Reddit threads end on. Voice Clock is the one I make. You pick an interval, tap Start, lock the phone, and it speaks the time until you stop it. A UK reviewer found it the modern way:

Keep Track of Time When in a Hurry

I’ve only used it once whilst in the Bath. I only had 25 minutes and couldn’t be late. I asked ChatGTP for a clock that would read the time every minute (or set time) and this is the only App that came up. So far used it once but hopefully it’ll get used often.

★★★★★ App Store review, United Kingdom, 21 November 2025, vectra34 · App Store

Clock-aligned or interval: pick the right mode

The app has two modes, and picking the wrong one makes it feel broken.

Mode	Every 15 minutes means	Good for
Clock-aligned	9:00, 9:15, 9:30, 9:45	Mornings, meetings, anything tied to the clock on the wall
Interval	15, 30, 45 minutes after you pressed Start	Workouts, study blocks, a timed bath

For hourly announcements on the hour, open Announcement Settings, set the interval to 1 hour, choose Clock Aligned and press Start. One reader in the US runs it every five minutes while getting ready:

Must need app if you struggle with ADHD time-blindness!

This has helped me stop losing track of time in the morning when getting ready for work. It really helps wonders for ADHD! I set it to clock-aligned every 5 minutes so at every 5 minute interval it will say aloud the time even if you have another app with sound going on or you lock your screen!

★★★★★ App Store review, United States, 23 August 2026, coricloud · App Store

You don't have to stay on one interval. An Australian user switches as the deadline gets closer:

Love it!

Simple to use and so useful when you might be worried about running late. Also like the choice of intervals - I use the 5min mostly but then switch to 1 min when I need extra care. Thank you so much!

★★★★★ App Store review, Australia, 1 May 2025, ArsenalCanberra · App Store

Things that trip people up

Scheduled versus started. Announcements you start with the Start button run in the background for as long as you like. Announcements you schedule to begin on their own go through iOS notifications, and iOS caps those at 64. If your hourly schedule goes quiet after a couple of days, that cap is the reason.

Volume follows media volume, not the ringer. If you can hear music, you'll hear the time. Music ducks for a moment while the time is spoken, and announcements pause during phone calls.

Night. Set Quiet Hours (say 22:00 to 07:00) so it stays silent while you sleep and picks up again in the morning.

Earphones. One Japanese reviewer pointed out that when you pull your earphones out, announcements carry on through the speaker. If you use it in an office, check that before your next meeting.

Which option should you use?

If you only want the time now and then, Siri costs nothing. If you need a handful of fixed reminders, a few Shortcuts automations will do. If you want to hear the time pass all morning without thinking about it, use an app. Voice Clock is free to download, and some features need a subscription.

Related reading: a morning routine that gets you out the door on time, using spoken intervals for workouts and the bath, and the older comparison of Voice Clock, Chime, Alexa and a mantel clock. The Voice Clock FAQ covers the rest of the setup.