I have a habit of setting alarms for almost everything I need to remember.
I know the Reminders app exists, but I've always preferred alarms.
The reason is simple. I find it too easy to ignore a reminder notification. It pops up, I dismiss it, and sometimes I end up forgetting about the task altogether.
An alarm, on the other hand, actually rings. It grabs my attention and makes it harder for me to ignore whatever I was supposed to do.
For me, that's a much better way to remember things or make sure I get something done.
But there's one problem with this habit.
After creating alarms for different tasks, my iPhone's Clock app starts filling up with alarms I no longer need.
And then comes the most annoying part: deleting those alarms, one by one.
Opening the Clock app, finding the old alarms, and manually deleting them gets tiring pretty quickly.
I wanted to keep using alarms without having to deal with the clutter.
That's when I decided to try something with Apple's Shortcuts app.
It's one of those built-in iPhone apps that I feel is seriously underrated. You can automate quite a few things without installing another app or writing code.
So I created four iOS Shortcuts to make managing my alarms easier.
1. Set Alarm Pro: Create an Alarm Without Opening the Clock App Link
The first shortcut is called Set Alarm Pro.
It's pretty straightforward.
When the shortcut is clicked, it asks for two questions:
- What time should the alarm be set for?
- What is the alarm for?
But before creating it, the shortcut adds the &: prefix to the title. So every alarm created through Set Alarm Pro follows the same naming convention.
The alarm appears in the Clock app like any other alarm. The difference is that my other shortcuts can now identify it.
2. Delete Alarm Pro: The Shortcut I Actually Needed Link
This is the main reason I started building the whole thing.
I was tired of manually deleting alarms that I had already used.
And when you create a lot of alarms for different tasks, that cleanup becomes unnecessarily repetitive.
When the shortcut is clicked, it gives two options:
Option 1: Delete Specific Alarm
Sometimes you want to delete only one alarm while keeping the others.
Instead of scrolling through the entire alarm list, the shortcut:
Finds alarms whose labels contain &:.
This makes it much easier to find and remove an alarm without going through the Clock app.
Option 2: Delete All
This is my favourite part.
Let's say we've created several task-related alarms for a day and no longer need them or want to clear today's alarms.
Normally, we'd have to open the Clock app and delete each one individually.
With Delete Alarm Pro, We can simply select Delete All.
The shortcut uses the Find Alarms action to find alarms containing &: in their labels and deletes them.
And because my regular alarms don't use this identifier, they aren't included in the cleanup.
This was the biggest improvement for me.
A small thing, perhaps, but it solves an annoyance I kept running into.
3. View Alarms Pro: Check All The Task-Related Alarms Link
Sometimes we want to see which task-related alarms we've created without searching through the entire alarm list.
The shortcut gives a quick overview.
If no matching alarms are found, it simply shows:
No alarms found.
Nothing complicated, but it's convenient when we just want to check my alarms.
4. Alarms Pro: Bringing Everything Together Link
After creating the three shortcuts, I thought it would be better to have everything accessible from one place.
That's how the fourth shortcut, Alarms Pro, came about.
It combines the functionality of the other three shortcuts.
From a single shortcut, One can:
- Set an alarm
- Delete an alarm or clear matching alarms
- View existing task-related alarms
Instead of running three separate shortcuts, We can use one entry point for the entire workflow.
Making It More Convenient with a Home Screen Widget
There's another thing I like about this setup.
I don't even have to open the Shortcuts app to use it.
Apple lets you add shortcuts to your iPhone's Home Screen through a Shortcuts widget.
So I can keep the shortcuts accessible directly from my Home Screen.
It's a small convenience, but it makes the whole workflow much more practical for everyday use.
Here's how they work.
The Idea: Give Alarms a Unique Identifier
Before explaining the four shortcuts, there's one small detail that makes everything work.
Whenever I create an alarm using my shortcut, it automatically adds &: to the beginning of the alarm title.
For example, the format looks like this:
&: [Alarm Title]
Why &:?
There's nothing special about these characters themselves. I just needed a consistent way to identify alarms created through my shortcut.
This prefix acts like a tag.
Later, when I want to view or delete those alarms, my other shortcuts search for alarms whose labels contain &:.
That way, I can manage my task-related alarms separately from my regular alarms.
It's a simple naming convention, but it's the most important part of the whole setup.
I used &:, but you can change the prefix if you prefer.
Just make sure it doesn't already appear in the titles of alarms you want to keep, since the filter searches for matching text in the alarm label.
Final Thoughts
I still prefer alarms over reminders.
Maybe it's because an alarm is harder for me to ignore, or maybe I've just become used to relying on them.
Either way, alarms work better for the way I remember things.
What I didn't like was how cluttered my alarm list became and how tedious it was to delete the alarms afterwards.
These four shortcuts let me keep using alarms the way I like, without the manual cleanup every time.
And that's what I enjoy about the Shortcuts app. Sometimes you don't need a complicated solution. A few built-in actions and a simple idea can solve a surprisingly annoying problem.
If you haven't explored Apple Shortcuts yet, I'd definitely recommend giving it a try.
Links:
1. Set Alarm Pro: Link
2. Delete Alarm Pro: Link
3. View Alarms Pro: Link
4. Alarms Pro: Link
I'm curious: do you prefer alarms or reminders for remembering tasks?
Top comments (0)