Timer

How the Timer Works

Unlike Pomodoro timers with fixed intervals, Set’s timer is flexible and tracks your actual work time. It counts up from zero, showing you exactly how long you’ve been working on a task or break.

The timer runs in the background, so you can switch apps or lock your phone without losing your progress. Both tasks and breaks from your Today view appear in the Timer view.

The Timer Screen

The screen is deliberately clean and symmetrical:

• The large countdown sits dead centre. Tap it to start or pause.
• The ambient-sound button sits in the top-left corner.
• The subtask button (when the current task has subtasks) sits in the matching top-right corner. On Mac, the floating-timer button sits beside it.
• Play/pause, the navigation arrows, and Complete run along the bottom.
• Progress and remaining time show in the bottom corners.

The App Blocker is set up and controlled from Settings rather than from this screen.

Timer Controls

Play/Pause

Tap the large timer or the play button to start or pause timing.

Long-press the play button to reset the current task’s timer to zero.

Navigate

Use the left and right arrows to move between tasks and breaks.

Skip without losing progress: When you navigate away from a running task and return to it, your elapsed time is preserved exactly where you left off. Your progress is never lost when switching between tasks.

Complete

Press the Complete button to mark the current task or break as done and move to the next item.

Auto-Simplify Timer

Turn on Auto-simplify while running under Settings → Timer to strip the running timer down to just the countdown and task name. As soon as you pause, the full controls come back.

To clear the system status bar as well, turn on Settings → Interface → Hide Status Bar → In Timer. That hides it whenever the Timer is on screen, and the Everywhere row above it covers the whole app.

Auto-simplify is automatic and tied to running versus paused, which sets it apart from Minimal Mode below (a manual long-press toggle that hides the chrome whether the timer is running or not).

Overtime Counting

When a task’s estimated time runs out, the timer continues counting, into negative time. This recreates the feeling of a deadline ticking past, helping you stay aware of how much overtime you’re spending and motivating you to wrap up.

The timer display turns red to signal overtime. If you would rather it stopped at zero, turn off Overtime counting under Settings → Timer.

Time’s Up alerts: When a task’s timer reaches its estimate while Set is in the background, you get a notification in your chosen style, so you never miss the finish even when the app is closed.

Overdue Alarm

Want a firmer nudge than a single chime? Turn on Overdue alarm under Settings → Timer. Once a running task passes its estimate, your alarm keeps sounding at the interval you choose until you complete the task or pause the timer.

Repeat alarm every offers 5, 10, 15 and 30 seconds, then 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 10, 15, 20 and 30 minutes.

Alarm Sound

The overdue alarm gets its own sound, separate from the timer alarm: 17 of them, generated in the app rather than played from a file, grouped as Bowls & Bells, Clicks & Pops, Chimes & Notes and Beeps & Rings. Pick Same as Timer Alarm instead and it follows whatever your timer-complete sound is, or choose one of the three bundled Timer Complete alarms directly.

Picking a sound plays it there and then, so you can find a nudge that gets you moving without making you jump.

If Set is in the background, notifications take over so the nudge still lands. The alarm is off by default, and it only applies to tasks; an overrun break never nags.

Timer Subtask Checklist

View and check off your subtasks directly from the Timer page, without leaving your focus session.

If the current task has subtasks, tap the subtask button in the top-right corner to reveal a checklist. Tap any subtask to mark it complete. Your progress is saved immediately.

Ambient Sounds

Set includes 52 ambient sounds, grouped as Weather, Water, Nature, Atmospheres, Colored Noise, Rhythmic and Focus Tones. That covers dynamic weather combos like Rain & Thunder, real-time coloured noise (white, pink, brown, blue, violet, green, grey, forest green and ocean blue), and binaural focus tones for headphones.

Tap the ambient-sound button (top-left in portrait, in the bottom row in landscape) to browse all of them and switch between them live, without pausing the timer. Open the picker with nothing running and Set previews each sound as you tap it, so you can audition before you commit. Sounds keep playing when the app is in the background, so the timer can be a focus companion.

Sounds Around the Timer

The timer’s other sounds live under Settings → Sounds: start, pause, the timer alarm, task completion and the day-complete celebration.

Those long menus are split into labelled groups instead of one endless list, and a Project complete picker joins them, so finishing the last task in a project sounds like finishing a project rather than like any other task. Choose the classic fanfare, one of six generated in the app, an achievement sound, Random or None.

App Blocker (Pro, iPhone and iPad)

Block distracting apps, or whole categories, with Screen Time while a task timer runs, or use the Until Today is clear schedule so apps stay blocked until every task in Today is done. It is set up and controlled from Settings → App Blocker, not from the timer screen. It’s an iPhone and iPad feature; the Mac isn’t supported. See the App Blocker documentation for details.

Control Center (iPhone, iOS 18+)

Add Set’s timer to Control Center for one-tap access. The control shows the task you’re timing and takes you straight to the Timer. Swipe into Control Center, tap Add a Control, and pick Set’s Timer.

Menu Bar Timer (macOS)

Turn on Show timer in menu bar under Settings → Timer to keep the running timer in your Mac menu bar, visible while you work in other apps. This is separate from the Floating Timer window below, so you can use either or both.

Floating Timer (macOS)

On macOS, you can open a mini floating timer window that stays visible on top of all your other apps. See the current task name and time remaining while you work, without switching back to Set.

To open it: click the picture-in-picture button in the top-right of the Timer, or turn on Show floating timer under Settings → Timer.

The Timer on Apple Watch

The watch’s Timer page mirrors whatever is running on your iPhone: a project-coloured ring filling towards your estimate, elapsed time with remaining beneath it, and pause, resume, complete and stop. Past your estimate the remaining time turns red and counts up. Open any task on the watch and Start Timer sits right under Complete.

Completing from the wrist runs your iPhone’s own completion, so the real timer minutes land in the task and in your stats.

The controls need your iPhone within Bluetooth or Wi-Fi range and grey out when it isn’t reachable. The display keeps counting either way. See Apple Watch for the rest of the watch app.

Customization

Color Mode

Tap the task name or project label to cycle between color modes:

• Project: Color based on the task’s project
• Priority: Color based on task priority (Urgent, High, Medium, Low and a grey None)
• Accent: Use your app’s accent color

Dark Mode

Long press the Progress percentage (bottom left) to toggle between light and dark mode.

Minimal Mode

Long press anywhere on the background to toggle minimal mode. This hides all UI elements except the large timer, perfect for distraction-free focus.

Long Press Actions

The Timer view supports several long press gestures:

• Background: Toggle minimal mode (hide/show all controls)
• Large Timer: Switch between showing elapsed time or remaining time
• Progress (bottom left): Toggle dark mode on/off
• Small Timer (bottom right): Toggle between showing minutes only or full time format
• Play Button: Reset the current task’s timer to zero

Keyboard Shortcuts (macOS)

• Spacebar: Play/Pause the timer

Live Activities (iOS 17+)

When you start a timer on iOS 17 or later, Set displays a Live Activity on your Lock Screen and in the Dynamic Island (iPhone 14 Pro and later).

It needs two toggles, both on by default: Settings → Timer → “Show Live Activity” in Set, and Live Activities for Set in iOS Settings.

Lock Screen

• Set’s own mark and the project name run along the top, with your finish time behind a checkered flag on the right. Paused, that corner says so instead.
• The task name gets the full width of the card.
• The big timer shares a baseline with the smaller elapsed or remaining reading beside it, so the two read as one line.
• A linear progress bar sits under the time, tinted your project’s colour.

The bar replaced a ring, and the reason is worth stating plainly, because anyone who watched the old ring stop will recognise it. A Live Activity only keeps moving for the two things iOS renders itself: the timer text and a linear progress view. Anything the app draws by hand, a ring included, freezes the moment iOS suspends the app, a few seconds after your screen sleeps. The old ring stopped dead while the time beside it carried on, which looks like a bug rather than a limit. The bar keeps filling while your phone is asleep, holds still when you pause, and sits full and red once you are past your estimate.

Dynamic Island

Compact view: a timer glyph (a teacup for breaks) on the left and the remaining time on the right, counting up with a minus once you are over. Expanded view: the project and task name, both time readings, and the same progress bar.

Smart Stack on Apple Watch

The Live Activity declares the small activity family, so where watchOS shows it, the running timer appears as a proper wrist-size card in the Smart Stack rather than the generic compact strip: task name, remaining time, project and the progress bar, all ticked by the system so they stay live while the phone app is suspended. Whether it reaches a given watch also depends on that watch’s own Live Activities setting.