HOW TO| SET AND MANGAGE YOUR ALARMS
1 Set an alarm
Tap Alarm at the bottom of the screen, and then the + at the top-right corner. This opens a form in which you set up your alarm: its time, how often it repeats, a label (‘Alarm’ by default, though customisable), which sound or song will be played, and whether the snooze option is even available. Dial in a time, then tap Repeat to choose the days of the week on which the alarm will be active. When you have at least one alarm turned on, a tiny alarm clock icon near the right of the status bar will remind you.
2 Snooze options
The Snooze switch is turned on by default for new alarms. If you leave it on, you’ll be able to mute an alarm by tapping a small piece of text on the iPad’s Lock screen, or by pressing one of the volume controls. The alarm will trigger again nine minutes later. With Snooze disabled, you’ll need to swipe on the screen to dismiss the alarm. You can work around the inability to customise the snooze duration by setting a second alarm to give yourself the extra amount of time in bed that suits you.
3 Switch off alarms
Tap Save and your alarm will appear on the week-long view; although setting labels is optional, it’s a good idea to change them if you have many alarms, to help you remember their purpose. Tap an alarm (it’ll be highlighted in red) and you’ll see its exact time at the top of the screen. Note the adjacent switch, which sets whether the selected alarm is active; you can use it to, say, temporarily turn off your morning alarm when you’re on holiday – but remember to come back and turn it on later.
4 Review alarms in a list
Tap Edit at the top-left to see all of your alarms in a list, ordered chronologically by time of day, but not necessarily by day of the week (because some might occur on multiple days). Active alarms have a white background, inactive ones are grey. Tapping an inactive alarm and then Save turns it on. You can tweak any of the settings you chose in step 1 here. Also note that when creating or editing an alarm, you can set it to a precise minute, not just the five- or 15-minute intervals available on the week view.
5 Mute/Do Not Disturb
The Mute switch in Control Centre (iPad Air 2/iPad mini 4; it’s a physical switch on iPads that are older) silences the sounds from notifications, alerts and effects such as the keyboard clicking, but it doesn’t silence purposeful sound, such as music, videos and, of course, your alarms. Likewise, alarms are an exception to the range of sounds that are silenced when you turn on Do Not Disturb in Control Centre, so you can safely shut out intrusions with the assurance you’ll be woken.
6 Control alarms with Siri
You can ask Siri to set alarms with phrases like “Set an alarm for 7“and “Wake me tomorrow at 8”. Ask it to show your alarms and it will display all of them (or a summary, if there are many), or you can ask for those in morning, afternoon or evening. It can change your alarms, too (“Change my 8am alarm to 7“). If you have few alarms and don’t mind recreating them after a holiday, say “Delete all alarms”. Remember, you can say “Hey Siri” to instruct your iPad as long as it is connected to an external power source.