A Timer That Starts Itself Again

It starts itself again

This is the part your phone's clock app probably does not do. Open a timer's row with the chevron and tick Repeat, and it becomes a loop timer: it reaches zero, rings briefly, then starts again for the same duration, until you stop the loop. What you set once is the interval.

The cycles are anchored to when each one was due, not to when you silenced it: thirty minutes repeated twice is sixty minutes, not sixty-one. Otherwise every bell you let run would stretch the rest of the day.

Ending the loop

A loop ends on a button called Stop loop: on the ringing screen, and on the ringing notification too, beside Continue and the button that adds time.

Unticking Repeat while a timer is ringing gives you one more cycle before it stops: the setting is read once per cycle, at the moment the bell starts.

The ringing screen comes up at every cycle and goes away by itself when the five seconds are over — nothing to tap, nothing to dismiss between cycles.

And the ordinary countdowns

The rest is what a clock app's timer already does. Tap the plus and you get a full-screen keypad rather than a dial: type the digits and they fill from the right, the way a microwave does. Four, zero, zero gives you four minutes, and six digits take you up to ninety-nine hours.

Timers sit in a list sorted by how long they were set for, shortest first, rather than by the order you made them. They run in parallel — several independent countdowns at once, looping or not.

Each row carries pause, and a +1:00 button that adds time to whatever is left — a minute unless you change it in Settings. Pause a timer and that button becomes a reset. The chevron opens the row for Repeat and delete.

The notification counts on its own

The countdown in your notification shade is drawn by Android itself rather than repainted by the app. It keeps ticking with no Risetime process alive at all.

There is one card for whatever is running or paused, and one for whatever is ringing — exactly two, never one per timer stacking up in the shade.

Swiping that card away stops nothing: it comes straight back from live state, and a ringing timer keeps ringing. Stopping is always a deliberate button.

Its own sound, its own volume

Timers do not borrow your alarm's settings, and a looping timer does not borrow the one-shot one either: two profiles, picked on whether Repeat is on. Each carries its own sound, volume, ring length and optional fade-in.

The two ring lengths are on deliberately different scales. In a loop: 5, 10, 15, 30, 60 or 120 seconds. For a one-shot timer: 1, 5, 10, 15, 20 or 25 minutes, or never.

No audio ships with the app: the sounds are your system's, or a file of your own. Two settings stay shared rather than doubled — whether timers vibrate, and what the volume keys do while a timer is ringing.

What it will not do

It is a countdown timer and a loop, nothing more:

• No work/rest alternation. A loop has one duration; thirty seconds on and thirty seconds off is two, and no screen builds a timer out of several.
• No chime partway through a session — a thirty-minute sit cannot sound at ten and at twenty.
• No time window, no quiet hours. A loop runs until you stop it.
• No chime on the hour. The interval runs from the moment you started it.

Setting one up

Open the Timers tab, tap the plus, type the duration. It starts on its own — there is nothing to name and nothing to file. To make it loop, tick Repeat behind the chevron.

The alarms guide covers the alarms, which share the same reliability settings.

What it costs

Risetime is free for up to three timers, the same count as its alarms — for good. Reach it and the add button is simply absent: no dialog, no padlock, no banner naming what you are missing. If your support lapses nothing is deleted: every timer you made keeps working, you just cannot add another. Need more than three? See if it's worth your support — if not, I'll be happy to hear you out.