Alarm Mode: When You Need a Timer to Fire at a Specific Time
Countdowns are great when you know the duration. Alarm mode is for when you know the time — and the gap between now and then isn't the point.
Countdowns work well when what you care about is the duration. Forty minutes for the roast. Twenty-five minutes for a focus block. Ninety seconds for a soft-boiled egg.
But sometimes the duration isn't the point. What matters is the moment — a specific time on the clock when something needs to happen.
That's what alarm mode is for.
How it's different from a countdown
A countdown starts from a duration and works toward zero. You set it, start it, and track how much time is left.
An alarm works the other way. You set a time — say, 14:30 — and Tempo calculates the gap between now and then. The card shows you the target time, not a counting duration. When the clock hits 14:30, it fires.
The practical difference: you don't have to do the mental arithmetic. You know your meeting is at half two. You don't need to work out that's 47 minutes from now. You just set 14:30 and forget it.
Setting one up
In the Add timer modal, switch to the Alarm tab. The duration fields are replaced with a time picker. Select the target time, name the alarm, and save it. It appears on your board alongside any countdowns or stopwatches you have running.
If you set an alarm for a time that's already passed today, Tempo schedules it for the same time tomorrow. Useful for recurring reminders.
Mixing alarms with countdowns
Alarms and countdowns live on the same board and run together. This is more useful than it sounds.
A common setup: you're deep in a work session and have a meeting at 15:00. You set an alarm for 14:50 — "Wrap up" — to give yourself a ten-minute buffer. Alongside it, you have a countdown for the current focus block. Both run simultaneously. The countdown tells you where you are in the work session; the alarm tells you when the session has to end regardless.
Another use case: cooking. The oven is set for a specific time on the timer. But you want a reminder at a specific clock time to start the sauce so it's ready at the same moment as everything else. A countdown for the sauce duration and an alarm for the clock-based check both live on the same board.
Chaining from an alarm
Alarms can be part of a chain just like countdowns. When an alarm fires, it can trigger the start of a countdown automatically — useful for sequences that start at a known time but then continue with duration-based stages.
Example: an alarm at 07:00 (wake-up) chains into a "Morning routine" countdown of 30:00, which chains into a "Leave by" alarm at 07:35. The whole morning sequence as a single chain, anchored to real clock times.