A talking timer for workouts, hangboard sessions and a bath that doesn't run long

Most workout timers beep. A beep tells you that something happened. It doesn't tell you if you're 20 seconds into a hang or 40, and on a hangboard that difference matters.

Spoken time solves this. You hear "twenty", "thirty", and you know where you are without looking at the phone propped on the floor.

Just what I needed

I was looking for an app that would give me voice timings when doing hang boarding exercises. This fit my needs perfectly.

★★★★★ App Store review, Canada, 23 March 2026, HalifaxNick · App Store

Use Interval mode, not Clock-aligned

For training you care about time since you started, not what the wall clock says. In Voice Clock, set Announcement Mode to Interval. Every 10 seconds then means 10, 20, 30 seconds after you press Start. Clock-aligned mode would speak at :00, :10, :20 on the clock, which drifts away from your set.

Some settings that work:

Activity	Interval	Why
Hangboard repeaters	every 1 to 5 seconds	You count the hang and the rest without looking down
Plank or wall sit	every 15 seconds	Enough feedback to pace yourself, not so much it nags
Rest between sets	every 30 seconds	Stops a two-minute rest from turning into five
Run or walk	every 5 minutes	A pace check with headphones in

The bath and the shower

This sounds trivial until you've missed a train because the water was warm. Phones and wet hands don't mix, and you won't check a screen in the bath. Leave the phone on the shelf and let it count.

Very simple, but quite useful

Useful when I need to focus on work but need to leave at a particular time, or when taking long but not too long bath.

★★★★★ App Store review, United States, 11 June 2025, BartekNow · App Store

For a 25-minute bath, set every 5 minutes in Interval mode. At "twenty" you know it's time to wash your hair.

Make the voice easy to hear

Announcements use your media volume, so turn it up before you start a noisy session. With a gym playlist running, the music dips while the time is spoken. You can also add a short chime before each announcement, which helps when you're breathing hard and might miss the first word.

On Apple Watch, the Voice Clock watch app taps your wrist before it speaks and keeps going when you drop your arm, so you can leave the phone in the locker.

A note on battery

Not every review is glowing, and this one is fair:

Good But…

Hi. This app is what I am looking for. It works great… but unfortunately it uses too much battery. In just less than 2 hours, it used 11% battery. I would like to see an update with power issue fixed.

★★★☆☆ App Store review, United States, 19 August 2025, Prash Soft · App Store

Speaking every second or two keeps the audio system busy, and that costs power. For a 40-minute session it won't matter. For an all-day setting, use a longer interval and save the second-by-second counts for the sets themselves. If you see drain like this, email [email protected] with your interval and iPhone model so I can reproduce it.

More: all the ways to make an iPhone say the time, and a morning plan for leaving on time. The older post on voice announcements versus notifications explains why a voice gets through when a banner doesn't.