How to Setup a Timer on Mac with Clock App

Timers have arrived on the Mac with the addition of the Clock app coming to modern versions of MacOS. This is exciting if you’ve long wanted to use a timer on your Mac, whether to set a timer for a project, for your own pomodoro or work, cooking something, how long a break should take, or anything else you might want to use a timer for. Before you could use Siri to set one, but now it’s a dedicated feature within the Clock application, bundled with MacOS.

You will need the Clock app in MacOS to use the Timers feature, and Clock app is available on all modern versions of MacOS including macOS Sonoma, Ventura, and newer. Clock app not only introduces a timer, as we’ll discuss here, but also am alarm clock, which is another useful feature that Mac users may enjoy and appreciate.

How to Set a Timer on the Mac with Clock App

The Clock app includes a built-in Timer functionality, and it’s very easy to use:

1. Open the “Clock” app on the Mac
2. Click on the “Timers” tab



3. Adjust the timer as needed, optionally you can label the timer, and you can also adjust the sound for when the timer goes off, then click on “Start” to begin the timer



4. You can pause or cancel the timer at any time, otherwise let the timer run, it will sound when it goes off

Optionally, you can also click on the + plus button in the corner of the Clock app when in the Timer tab, and you’ll be able to access a Presets menu with a variety of preset and preconfigured timer settings. You will also see your recently used timers here too.

The addition of the Clock app on Mac includes the Timer, as discussed here, as well as a World Clock, a Stopwatch, and an Alarm Clock. These are all features that have existed on the iPhone and iPad for a while, but the Clock app just recently came to the Mac so they’re newer in macOS.

Remember you can always set a timer on your iPhone or iPad too, also through the Clock app, or through Siri.