How-to guide · Time, alarms & calendar Set a labeled timer with your voice

Actionset_timer
Audience Cognitive Motor
Time Under 5 seconds
Permissions None — uses the system Clock app
What this is: One spoken sentence and the kitchen timer is running — with the label you said, in the duration you said. No tapping into the Clock app, no setting hour/minute/second wheels, no remembering which tab the timer lives on. Useful when your hands are wet, floury, or just full.
Try it now

Open Aside on your phone, then say or type:

“Timer for twelve minutes for the rice.”

Aside confirms in the chat history and the system Clock app opens with a 12-minute timer already counting down. The label rice is set so you know what each timer is for if you stack two or three.

Step by step

  1. Open Aside

    Tap the Aside icon, or trigger your assist gesture if you’ve set Aside as your default assistant. Aside opens to the orb in its idle state — calm, slowly breathing — with the prompt “Tell me everything,” beneath it.

    The Aside main screen at idle on a Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra. Across the top: the word ‘Aside’ with a red dot, a small mono status pill reading ‘● IDLE’, the cost counter ‘$1.975 today’, and a ‘NEW’ link top-right. Centered in the screen is a large warm-paper-colored orb with a soft brown core, slowly breathing. Below the orb in large bold type: ‘Tell me everything,’. Below that, in lighter type: ‘Tap the orb or type below.’. Near the bottom is a clay-colored pill button reading ‘Make Aside my assistant’. Below that is a row of four mono pills: ‘history’, ‘type’, ‘muted’, ‘memory · 3’.
    Aside open at idle. The orb is breathing; nothing is happening yet.

  2. Say (or type) the timer request

    Hold the orb to talk and say “Timer for twelve minutes for the rice,” or tap the type pill at the bottom and type the same phrase, then send. The duration can be any natural-language span Aside understands — “ninety seconds,” “an hour and a half,” “twenty-five minutes” all work. The label is whatever follows for.

    Timer for twelve minutes for the rice.
    The Aside main screen now in the listening state. The status pill at the top has changed to ‘● LISTENING…’ in clay-red type, with the cost counter still at ‘$1.975 today’ next to it. Because the listening pill is wider than IDLE, the ‘NEW’ link top-right has wrapped vertically as ‘N E W’ in stacked letters. The orb is the same warm shape, with a softly diffused outline that pulses with the microphone level. Beneath the orb a single centered sentence reads ‘I’m listening.’ The bottom pill row (‘history’, ‘type’, ‘muted’, ‘memory · 3’) and the clay-colored ‘Make Aside my assistant’ button are still present.
    Orb shifts to listening once the mic activates.

  3. See Aside confirm

    Aside replies in both audio and text. The chat history shows your transcribed request, Aside’s spoken reply, and an Aside note chip showing the action that was performed — in this case a 12-minute timer for “rice”. The Clock app is launching in the background.

    The Aside main screen with the chat history bottom sheet covering the lower half of the screen. The status pill at the top has changed to ‘● READY’ and the cost counter has ticked up to ‘$2.013 today’. Behind a slight scrim the orb is dimmed; the words ‘Tell me everything,’ and ‘Tap the orb or type below.’ are still partially visible. Inside the sheet are three stacked entries: a small mono label ‘YOU’ above the line ‘Timer for twelve minutes for the rice.’; a label ‘ASIDE’ above the line ‘Setting a twelve minute timer for the rice.’; and a clay-tinted ‘ASIDE NOTE’ chip showing ‘▶ timer: 12m (rice)’ — the explicit action marker.
    Aside confirms on screen and aloud. The action chip shows the exact duration and label that were set.

  4. Watch the timer counting down in Clock

    The system Clock app slides in front and lands you on the Timer tab with a freshly running 12-minute timer, labeled rice. It is already counting down — you do not need to press a start button. Lock your phone and walk away; the alarm fires when the timer hits zero, even with the screen off.

    The Samsung Clock app on the Galaxy S23 Ultra, in dark mode on the Timer tab. A near-complete purple-violet ring fills most of the upper half of the screen, indicating the timer is most of the way around. Inside the ring: the small label ‘rice’ at the top, the large white remaining-time digits ‘11:53’ in the center, and below them a small bell icon next to the alarm time ‘10:36 a.m.’. Top-right of the screen are a list icon, a ‘+’ add-timer button, and a three-dot overflow menu. Below the ring, near the bottom of the screen, two pill buttons: a dark gray ‘Delete’ button on the left and a red ‘Pause’ button on the right. The bottom tab bar shows Alarm, World clock, Stopwatch, and Timer with Timer highlighted.
    Clock app, Timer tab. The ‘rice’ timer is already counting down — no extra taps required.
Stack as many as you need: Run the same flow again with a different duration and label and the Clock app stacks the timers. “Timer for forty minutes for the chicken” while the rice timer is already going just adds a second one.
If the Clock app doesn’t open: On a few non-Samsung phones the system SET_TIMER intent isn’t honored. Aside still confirms and the timer fires through Aside’s own scheduler — but you won’t see the Clock UI. If that happens, see Schedule a local reminder for the in-app alternative.