January 8, 2021

The Most Irritating Thing About iOS

A few months ago, I got my first ever iPhone. Until then, my smartphones were always Android.

I don’t think either is particularly better than the other, but since I use a Mac and an iPad it does make everything a little bit smoother, and I’m now so deep into the ecosystem I can’t see myself switching back anytime soon. There were obviously some quirks to get used to on the new operating system, but generally I got used to it fairly quickly.

Having said that, there’s still one thing about iOS that irritates me every. single. time.

Why can’t I edit alarms and why can’t I choose my snooze length?!

This baffles me. It seems like such a basic user need. I never even thought about this when I used Android because it just seemed like obvious functionality for a smartphone clock app. When considering switching, it never even occurred to me to check this.

The result is that every time you want an alarm for a different time, you either have to delete your existing one and create a new one, or you just create a new one and end up with a messy ever-expanding list of alarms to manage.

I used to always have a 20 minute snooze on my alarm. This was the perfect amount of time to wake up, then snuggle in bed for a bit while I let my brain boot for the day. Now I only have 9 mins 😩 — definitely not enough. Or I have to set two separate alarms 20 mins apart and remember to keep them in sync.

I can only assume that iPhone users are so used to this that it never occurred to them there could be a better way. Otherwise how have we had 14 years of iPhones and still be missing such obvious features?!

Or maybe everyone just uses a third-party clock app? I did try this but I couldn’t find any that weren’t full of ads or bloated or looked ugly or had other disagreeable features. I would be open to paying for a good one, though I kind of resent it since it feels like it should be built in… (Recommendations welcome)

The one possible benefit of all this is I think it might actually have made my sleep schedule more consistent: Changing the alarm time is just enough of a pain that I tend to just leave it as is, meaning that I started getting up at the same time everyday. Which is great I guess… but I still feel a bit weird about my iPhone tricking me into better habits!