After the arrival of iOS 26, one of the things that has changed, although it was not announced, is the Clock app, where the Alarm option has a double novelty, so today we will see both, although you will have to have the beta of this version if you want to try them.
In any case, don’t worry, in a few months it will be public for everyone, and you’ll be able to do so without having to risk an unstable version, since, as we always say, installing it on a personal, everyday iPhone is not the most advisable option. However, let’s see how it would work.
Changes to the Alarm app in iOS 26
If you already have iOS 26, I won’t need to tell you about the first change, as you’ll have seen it clearly: the buttons to snooze or stop the alarm are much larger, making it easier for us not to make mistakes when pressing them when we’re half asleep.
But, as we already said, there is another interesting change, and that is that now it will no longer be necessary to postpone 9 minutes each time we want to delay the alarm, but we can customize it, from 1 minute onwards, being able to choose 10, for example, if it is more comfortable for us.
So, if you don’t have iOS 26 yet, you won’t be able to do this, but once you install it, this option will come natively in the Clock app, and you won’t have to do anything other than select this value when adding a new alarm.
Why was it 9 minutes?
You may have wondered why, when you hit “snooze” on your iPhone, your alarm goes off again exactly 9 minutes later. It’s not 8. It’s not 10. Why 9?
The answer lies in the past. Back in the 1950s, when the first watches with a snooze function began appearing, General Electric engineers ran into a mechanical limitation: they couldn’t make the snooze last exactly 10 minutes without completely redesigning the watch. So they settled on the closest thing the technology of the time allowed: 9 minutes.
And the funny thing is, that decision stuck. Over time, even digital watches and smartphones (like the iPhone) maintained that tradition. The reason? Probably out of habit, a bit of nostalgia, and because 9 minutes is a good balance—it gives you a break, but not long enough to get you back to a deep sleep—so it’s better than 11 or 8, or so they thought at the time.
So, the next time you snooze your alarm, you know those 9 minutes have a story behind them, although now you can choose whether to keep that time or choose the 10 minutes that, previously, weren’t possible.
