Why most snooze timers are set to nine minutes

You’ve probably noticed it—half-awake, half-dreaming. You hit snooze, and exactly nine minutes later, the alarm strikes again. Not ten. Not eight. Nine.

It’s a tiny interval. But somehow, it sticks. And even if you’ve never thought to ask why, the moment you do, it becomes one of those little life mysteries that suddenly feels urgent. Let’s unpack the logic—or lack thereof—behind the snooze button’s most famous number. Because the answer is older than you think. And weirder than you’d expect.

The story starts in 1956, with the invention of the snooze feature on mechanical alarm clocks. One of the earliest models to include it—the General Electric-Telechron “Snooz-Alarm”—settled on a nine-minute interval. Not because someone ran tests and found it was the ideal length for a mini-nap. But because clockmakers were working with physical gears, not code.

Making the mechanism pause exactly ten minutes was more difficult and costly. Aligning the gear teeth meant choosing between just over nine minutes or slightly more than ten. They picked the simpler path. Nine minutes—plus or minus a few seconds—was the cleanest option within analog constraints. It was a manufacturing compromise. One that became a default.

When digital clocks and, later, smartphones came along, engineers could have changed it. But they didn’t. By then, nine minutes had become a kind of muscle memory—a standard people had grown weirdly attached to. It felt familiar. Safe. Expected. And so it remained. Not because it was perfect. But because it was legacy.

Fast forward to today, and that same odd number lives on inside the default alarm settings of iPhones across the world. You can’t change it—not unless you ditch the snooze function entirely and stack custom alarms. (Android, more open-minded, lets you choose between five, ten, 15, or 30-minute snoozes on most models.)

But here’s the twist: that fixed interval? It’s not just an engineering footnote anymore. It’s part of a modern morning ritual. A ritual of delay. Of negotiation. Of soft rebellion. We don’t just wake up anymore—we bargain with time. One snooze, then maybe another. Each a tiny act of postponement that still lets us feel vaguely in control.

Some sleep researchers argue that nine minutes might be just enough to let your brain drift without falling back into deep sleep. Once you cross the ten-minute mark, you risk slipping into a new sleep cycle—only to be yanked out of it, which feels worse than just getting up. So in a strange, accidental way, that old mechanical limit aligns with modern sleep science. But let’s be clear: it wasn’t intentional. The science came after the standard. Not the other way around. Still, we’ve collectively adopted it. Not because it’s optimal. But because it works just enough—and feels like tradition.

Think about what the snooze button actually is. It’s a moment of retreat. A pocket of delay. A pause that asks nothing of you—except a little hope that nine more minutes will make everything better. And that says something about how we navigate daily life.

We live in a world that constantly tells us to be productive, alert, prepared. Yet the very first thing many of us do each day is… delay it. Just a little. Not out of laziness, but out of weariness. Out of a desire to stay warm, to hold onto the quiet, to resist the inevitable calendar onslaught waiting outside the blanket. Snoozing is not failure. It’s a coping mechanism. It’s the most human reaction to a world that demands machine-like responsiveness.

The rigidity of the iPhone’s nine-minute snooze isn’t a bug—it’s a quiet design decision. Apple could offer a custom setting, but it doesn’t. Maybe because simplicity is cleaner. Maybe because tradition is sticky. Or maybe because the illusion of choice is sometimes more exhausting than helpful.

After all, if you really wanted to change your snooze window, you could just set multiple alarms at staggered intervals. Many people do. The default doesn’t stop you from hacking your own morning routine. It just nudges you toward the old rhythm. And let’s be honest: for many of us, that nine-minute beat is so ingrained that even a custom snooze wouldn’t feel right.

Most sleep experts agree that snoozing—especially multiple times—can be counterproductive. You’re not getting real rest. You’re fragmenting your sleep, confusing your body, and raising cortisol levels every time the alarm rings again.

Dr. Holly Schiff, a clinical psychologist, explains that repeated snoozing can even affect your cardiovascular and nervous systems. That low-grade jolt you feel each time the alarm sounds? It’s not benign. It builds stress over time.

And yet, millions of people do it every day. Not because they’re ignorant of the science. But because reality isn’t always compatible with good habits. We snooze because we’re tired. Because we’re not getting eight solid hours. Because life is full, and mornings come too fast. Snoozing isn’t logical. It’s emotional. There’s something hauntingly specific about that number. Nine minutes. It’s short enough to feel harmless. Long enough to tempt. It doesn’t give you time to do anything else—but it’s just enough to believe you could rest.

It’s the adult version of “five more minutes” before lights out. A way to hold time in your palm for just a little longer. And in a world where everything is optimized, automated, and pushed toward maximum efficiency, the snooze button is a little monument to the irrational. It doesn’t make us better. But it makes us feel momentarily okay.

Your snooze behavior is quietly personal. Some people never use it—rising the moment the alarm chirps, no questions asked. Others hit snooze twice, three times, endlessly negotiating with the day. Some set multiple alarms five minutes apart, building a kind of permission ladder toward consciousness. It’s not just about sleep. It’s about control. About ritual. About the way we transition from vulnerability to obligation. That’s why the snooze button matters. Not because of its efficiency—but because of the strangely intimate space it occupies.

It started as a mechanical limit. It became a cultural reflex. And now it’s a daily ritual that tells us more about modern life than we might expect. We don’t snooze because it’s smart. We snooze because it’s kind. Because it offers a soft exit from sleep instead of a sharp command. In those nine minutes, we reclaim a little softness. A little delay. A little time that feels like ours.

It’s not just about avoiding the day—it’s about easing into it on our own terms. In a world that moves fast, expects alertness, and celebrates hustle, the snooze button is one of the few sanctioned pauses we still allow ourselves. It’s not laziness. It’s self-preservation disguised as design. And every morning, when we tap it, we’re saying: not yet—but soon.

And maybe that’s enough.