The iPhone Alarm Went Viral Over The Weekend - Here's Why

The iPhone's alarm is a feature we've been taking for granted for nearly twenty years. It's a basic feature of the Clock app that allows users to set an alarm (or multiple) and wait for the iPhone to wake them up. The iPhone alarm isn't a feature you want to see go viral on the internet. Whenever that happens, it's usually because some sort of malfunction prevented the alarm from going off at the desired time, or the iPhone has a strange alarm bug we can't explain. But something unusual happened over the long Labor Day weekend. The iPhone alarm went viral online for a good reason. Someone discovered an unexpected Easter egg from Apple that challenges everything we thought we knew about it: The time picker isn't a wheel.

The iPhone alarm is a feature some people might like because of the way it is designed. The user interface features two or three "wheels" that you scroll to set the alarm. One is for hours, one is for minutes, and the optional third wheel appears for AM/PM. You scroll through each wheel to pick the time when you want your alarm to go off.

The user interface is why the iPhone alarm went viral on social media. An intrepid iPhone owner with extra time on their hands discovered that the three wheels aren't wheels at all. Instead, two of them are long lists of repeating numbers. Each list ends eventually. It's a fascinating discovery, mostly because it took iPhone owners so long to find it.

X user sky posted the video below that shows the list of numbers eventually ending. The first row lets you set the hour, so it goes from "1" to "12" or "1" to "24," depending on how you choose to display the time. The second row lets you pick the minutes, from "00" to "59." The third row only features "AM" and "PM" and it shows up if you're on a 12-hour time setting.

The clip has been viewed over 38 million times at the time of this writing. It shows the first row ending with a "4" on the 12-hour clock setting. Macworld notes that the minutes list ends at "39," which seems just as random as the "4" in the hour list. But you'll need to go through 30 swipes in each list to reach the end.

the time picker on iphones alarm app isn't actually circular it's just a really long list pic.twitter.com/mvszyGILbR

— sky (@skydotcs) August 31, 2025

It's unclear why Apple adopted this particular design for the alarm's time picker. Macworld speculates that it's easier to program a long list of repeating numbers than create an actual loop. Apple uses design elements to give us the impression that the numbers sit on a revolving wheel. The tactile effect of the time picker also helps. The design and the vibrations make it "feel" like the numbers are looping. It's why we scroll back and forth to set the desired alarm time. In practice, we're scrolling through a list. By making the lists long enough, Apple ensured that most iPhone owners will never reach the end.

More interesting than the fake wheel design is an iPhone alarm feature in iOS 26: You can now set custom snooze times and replace the 9-minute setting that was the default until iOS 18.