How to make your Mac announce the time every hour

9 October 2026 · 6 min read

Your Mac can speak the time aloud on the hour, the half hour or the quarter hour, and switching it on takes about a minute. Open System Settings, choose Control Center, find Clock, click Clock Options, and tick Announce the time. From then on, the Mac says the time at the interval you picked for as long as it is awake.

Switch on the spoken time

The setting lives with the menu bar clock’s options. On macOS Ventura, Sonoma and Sequoia the path is:

1. Open the Apple menu and choose System Settings.
2. Click Control Center in the sidebar.
3. Scroll down to the menu bar items and find Clock. Click the Clock Options button beside it.
4. Tick Announce the time.
5. Use the menu next to it to choose On the hour, On the half hour or On the quarter hour.
6. Click Done.

If your version of macOS arranges these settings differently, type “announce” or “clock” into the search field at the top of the System Settings sidebar. It finds the panel faster than hunting for it.

The first announcement comes at the next matching mark, not straight away. If you choose On the hour at 2:40, you hear nothing until 3:00. That pause is the most common reason people assume the setting did nothing.

Change the voice, speed and volume

Beside the interval menu is a Customize Voice button. It lets you pick which system voice speaks the time and, if you want, give the announcement its own speaking rate and volume instead of following the Mac’s defaults.

A few choices make the chime easier to live with:

• A slightly slower rate. When you are deep in something, a quick announcement can be over before you register it. Slowing it down a notch makes it land.
• A quieter volume than your music. The point is a nudge, not a jolt. Set it so you notice it without flinching.
• A voice you like. You will hear it many times a day. More voices can be downloaded under System Settings, Accessibility, Spoken Content: open the System voice menu and choose Manage Voices.

The announcement plays through whatever sound output the Mac is using. With headphones on, only you hear it, which is worth knowing if you work in a shared room. If you take calls on your speakers, the people on the call may hear it too, so headphones are kinder there.

When it stays quiet

If the hour came and went in silence, check these in order:

1. Wait for the next mark. If you just turned it on, give it until the next hour, half hour or quarter hour.
2. Check the volume and the output. A muted Mac stays muted for announcements too. Open Control Center in the menu bar and look at Sound: if the output is a display’s speakers or headphones sitting in a drawer, the time is being spoken somewhere you cannot hear.
3. Check that the Mac was awake. A sleeping Mac says nothing. If your Mac sleeps after a short idle period, the chime goes quiet when you step away, which is often fine and sometimes the opposite of what you wanted.
4. Test speech on its own. Open Terminal from Applications, then Utilities, and type say "testing the voice" followed by Return. If you hear that, speech works and the problem is the clock setting. If you hear nothing, it is the sound output.
5. Toggle it off and on. If it worked before a macOS update and stopped after, untick Announce the time, click Done, then turn it back on.

Why a spoken hour helps

Hours disappear when you are absorbed. You sit down after lunch to fix one thing and look up to find the light has changed. A spoken time is an outside marker that does not depend on you remembering to look at the clock, and it reaches you without asking you to switch windows.

People use it in different ways:

• On the hour works as a background pulse. It tells you another hour has gone without interrupting much.
• On the quarter hour suits timeboxed work. If you gave a task thirty minutes, you hear two announcements and know where you are.
• On the half hour is a middle ground for days full of short meetings, when you need to know whether the next one is close.

It also helps you notice the edges of the day: when lunch is overdue, when it is time to stand up, and when your closing time has arrived. If you tend to keep working past that point, pair the chime with a decision made in advance. How to set a closing time for your workday and keep it covers that part.

What the chime cannot tell you

A spoken hour tells you that time passed. It does not tell you where it went. At four o’clock you know it is four, but not whether the last hour was the report you meant to finish, the inbox, or a browser tab that turned into forty minutes of reading.

That second question needs a record, and a record you have to keep by hand rarely survives a busy week. Punchcard keeps it without you doing anything. It notices which app is in front through the day, app names only, never window titles, document names or what is on screen, and at the closing time you set it prints a paper receipt of the day: your top five apps with the time on each, the rest as MISC, and a day total. It needs no macOS permissions, has no timers to start, and keeps everything on your Mac.

Used together, the two answer different questions. The chime answers “what time is it” while you are working. The receipt answers “where did today go” once you have stopped. Tracking is free and never expires, the first two receipts are free, and printing after that is $9 once.

If losing track of time is a daily problem rather than an occasional one, An ADHD-friendly way to end the workday on a Mac has more ideas for making the end of the day visible. And if you want the Mac itself to stop at a set hour, see How to schedule a Mac to sleep or shut down at a set time.

Questions

Can my Mac announce the time every five minutes?

Not with this setting; the shortest interval is the quarter hour. Terminal can do it while its window stays open: while true; do say "$(date +%l:%M)"; sleep 300; done speaks the time every five minutes. Press Control-C to stop it.

Can I hear the time once, on demand?

Ask Siri what time it is, if Siri is switched on. Or type say "$(date +%l:%M)" in Terminal and press Return; it speaks the current time once and stops.

Will it wake the Mac to announce the time?

No. It speaks only while the Mac is awake. If you need the Mac awake at a particular hour, the schedule in the post linked above is the place to set that.

Does the announcement show up in a time record?

No. It is spoken by macOS without bringing any app to the front, so it does not add a line to a record of which app you were using.