Believe it or not, you can actually use your Chromebook to set alarms, timers, and even to get your bedtime schedule up to snuff in the same way that you would use your Android phone. You’ve probably never heard this before because, at first blush, it sounds both unreasonable and impossible.
However, using a smaller Chromebook like the Lenovo Duet by your bedside with a kickstand and no keyboard if you don’t have a smart display, or even combining these sorts of tasks into your Chromebook to avoid hitting snooze since it’s across the room in the morning can be a great way to operate and gain traction in your life. Today, I’m going to show you exactly how to set up alarms, timers, world clocks, and a night and morning schedule right from your laptop so that you can get more out of your device!
Installing the Google Clock app
Your Chromebook may already have the Google Clock pre-installed. That’s right, even though it isn’t visible to you in your app launcher, you may already have the same exact clock app on the big screen as your phone! If that’s true though, then where the heck is it? Well, for some reason or another, Google has failed to make it appear in the Chromebook app drawer via the ‘Everything button‘. To make matters worse, you can’t tell Google Assistant to “Set an alarm”. If you try this, it will reply that it “can’t do that yet”. It’s said this for years, and there’s currently no fix in sight.
All you’ll need to do is open the Google Play Store on your Chromebook, search for “Google Clock”, and hit the green “Install” button on the proper listing. Alternatively, you can click below to be taken directly to it! If you already have it installed out of the box, but can’t locate it in your launcher, then you’ll see an “Open” button on the app listing in the Play Store instead. Click “Open” so we can continue!
Wow, that’s a beautiful app, isn’t it? You’re seeing Google’s Clock app with Material You – the company’s new visual design language. It’s honestly a mystery to me as to why Google has yet to make this available natively on the device, especially after all of these years, but there it is. If your Clock app opened in fullscreen, don’t be afraid to unmaximize it. I find that dragging it to the left side gives it a more natural feel. There’s no shame in using Android apps on Chrome OS in phone mode if it makes sense to do so!
Pinning the Clock app to your shelf
The unfortunate part about using the Google Clock app on your Chromebook is that closing it causes it to disappear into the abyss where it came from once more. It will no longer be accessible through your app launcher even though it’s still installed, and you’ll need to head back to the Google Play Store in order to open it again. For this reason, I recommend “pinning” the app to your Chromebook shelf. Follow the instructions below to make sure you always have access to your clock!
- Open the Clock app
- Right-click the clock app icon on your bottom shelf
- Click the “Pin” thumbtack icon
- Even after closing the app, it will remain on your shelf – hooray!
Pro Tip: Right-clicking the Clock app on your shelf will present you with quick actions for creating a new alarm or timer, starting the stopwatch, or entering Screen saver mode!
Pro Tip: If you don’t want to pin the Clock app to your shelf, you can activate Google Assistant and say “Hey Google, open the Clock app” to quickly launch it after it’s installed.
Alright, now that we’ve discovered the secret to unearthing this awesome Google app despite the company’s attempts to keep it hidden, let’s learn how to set alarms, timers, add world clocks, use the stopwatch, and more.
Setting alarms
- Click the “Alarm” tab at the bottom of the app
- Click the big, blue plus (+) button
- A circle analogue clock will appear. Click or drag to the hour you want to set
- You’ll immediately be taken back to “00” at the top of the clock. This is because you’re not being asked to select the minutes. Tap or drag to the minutes you want to set for your alarm.
- Be sure to tap “AM”, or “PM” at the top-right of this dialogue so your alarm doesn’t go off at the wrong time!
- Tap “OK” at the bottom-right of the dialogue box
That’s it! You now have an alarm that should have populated this area. You’ll see the time in bold, a slider showing that the alarm is toggled “on”, and more. If you tap the “Add label” section at the top of the alarm card, you can set a name for the alarm. The day of the week bubbles will allow you to set the alarm to recur on multiple days.
You can even set an alarm tone by tapping the “Default (None) section with the ringing bell icon. Because this app is running on the Android framework, it shouldn’t need to remain open for the alarm to go off when the time comes, but you can leave it open if you’d like. An “Upcoming Alarm” persistent notification will sit in your notification tray as well where you can open or dismiss it at any time, even if the app is closed.
NOTE: Be sure to turn the volume up on your Chromebook so that your alarm can be heard when it sounds!
Creating clocks for different cities
If you’d like to create a clock for a different time zone so you can keep track of the time difference, the following instructions will help you place a new clock under your own local one:
- Tap the “Clock” tab at the bottom of the app
- Tap the “Plus” button
- Search for a city and select it
Setting timers and using the stopwatch
Since the focus of this tutorial is to show you how to utilize the Clock app for alarms primarily, I’ll just add a quick note here regarding timers and stopwatches. While timers are undoubtedly more useful on a Chromebook than a stopwatch may be, keep in mind that you can simply ask Google Assistant to set timers on your behalf. If you’d still like to use this app to do so in order to keep everything in one place though, feel free!
- Visit the “Timer” or “Stopwatch” tab at the bottom of the app and
- Hit the “Start” triangle button – voilà!
Setting a bedtime schedule
Here’s an interesting one – you can actually create a bedtime schedule on your Chromebook so you can be notified when it’s time to wrap things up at night and time to wake up and get things rolling. There are a few other options as well, like enjoying sleep sounds and even using a screensaver, so let’s take a look at how to set it up!
- Click the “Bedtime” tab at the bottom of the Clock app
- Click “Get started” under the animated graphic
- Set a regular wake-up alarm, including which days it recurs and what noise it will make
- Click “Next” and then set a bedtime and when your device will be silenced on the next screen
- Click “Done”. You’ll be taken to the “Bedtime” tab where you can see your Schedule, choose a sleep sound and even see upcoming Google Calendar events for the next day!
Pro Tip: Choosing a sound allows you to pick a song or calming track from Spitify, Calm, Pandora, or YouTube Music (Premium members only). This will make you install the Android app version of these, so if you’re using the web app, you must double up on app experiences in order to use this feature!
Using the screensaver
The Clock app has a built-in Screensaver feature, which can be useful for those who are using their Chromebook for its alarms, but I’m fairly certain that the sleep function on the Chromebook itself will override the Screensaver after a while of inactivity. With that being said, it’s probably not worth using, but I wanted to teach you how anyways! Simply right-click the Clock app on your shelf and choose “Screensaver”, or visit the three vertical dots “more” menu at the top-right of any tab in the app and choose the same option.
Your screen will go dark except for the current time as the clock appears somewhere on the screen and floats around. Keep in mind that any mouse or keyboard or even touch screen input will wake your device from this screensaver mode.
Time’s Up!
That’s it! Now you’re a Clock master, and you’ve unlocked a hidden feature on your Chromebook. Keep in mind that the Bedtime tab doesn’t yet show your sleep patterns as it does on Android via your phone, but this may be a feature baked into the Digital Wellbeing integration which could one day arrive on Chrome OS if Google thinks it up or sees it useful. Ultimately though, this app and these features aren’t likely to get a lot of love on Chromebooks because it’s simply not a device one would normally associate with these tasks. Regardless, you can now enjoy it all you want!
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