Let's face it, alarm clocks are annoying. Even though they are one of the most important inventions in the world, they disturb us when we don't always want to be disturbed.
Normally, when our alarms go off, we stop or snooze them. But have you ever wondered whether your alarm would go off by itself eventually?
Do Alarm Clocks Turn Off by Themselves?
The short answer is yes. Alarm clocks usually turn off by themselves. But the long answer is that it depends on the type of alarm clock you're using.
Back when alarm clocks first became popular, everyone used a wind-up clock. You would wind it to your desired time, and when it went off, it would keep ringing until you stopped it or it unwound itself.
Nowadays, digital and outlet-powered alarm clocks have pre-defined limits set for how long they will go off. You can generally expect a modern alarm clock to turn off by itself, especially if you're using an alarm on your phone. However, it is usually possible to turn off this feature so your alarm never stops ringing (until it runs out of battery, of course).
How Long Does an iPhone Alarm Go Off For?
If you're using the iPhone's clock app, the default length of time that the alarm will sound is 15 minutes. After this time, both the sound and the vibration of the alarm will stop. On-screen, you will still have the option to snooze or stop the alarm.
This is presumably a battery-saving feature, as the iPhone likely assumes you are unavailable (like you've left your phone at work), not that you're just ignoring it. It most likely keeps the stop/snooze information on the screen to notify you that an alarm went off.
You can't change the length of time an iPhone alarm sounds for. But if you download another alarm clock app, it may have different settings that you can tweak.
How Long Does an Android Alarm Ring?
An Android has a default alarm duration of 10 minutes. Unlike the iPhone, you can change how long an Android alarm rings. You can change the "silences after" setting in the settings tab related to the alarm.
Most Androids will let you change the duration to 1 minute, 5 minutes, 15 minutes, 20 minutes, 25 minutes, or never. If you set your alarm to never, the alarm will keep ringing until it runs out of battery - so be warned if you're prone to leaving your phone unattended somewhere!
How Long Does an Alexa Alarm Ring?
Most Alexa users report that the alarm turns off after 4 minutes as a default setting. Although you can customize how long an Alexa alarm goes off. You can do this by asking Alexa to set an alarm at a time for the duration.
How Long Does an Alarm Clock Snooze For?
Most alarm clocks in the modern world have a default setting of snoozing for 9 minutes.
Interestingly, the reason it's 9 minutes is because of tradition. There are lots of theories as to how the 9-minute snooze came about. The most popular theory is that when the snooze feature was invented in the 1950s, the inner workings of the standard clocks couldn't be changed to have two gears overlapping. This meant that the clockmakers had two choices: snooze for under or over ten minutes.
At the time, people thought that more than 10 minutes would be too long. So, the engineers settled for 9 minutes.
Nowadays, most alarms will default to the 9-minute snooze because it's what people expect. Some modern-day alarm clocks (especially digital ones) will let you customize the length of your snooze.
