If you work from home, you may have trouble keeping track of time. Sure, you can look at the clock in your menu bar, but it’s easy to forget when you’re kneeling on a project. Fortunately, Macs have long had a feature that allows them to announce the time at regular intervals. Unfortunately, this option is not available in its usual place with macOS Big Sur. Well, if you’re wondering how to make your Mac speak the time, here’s how to use the announcement clock in macOS Big Sur.
How to Use Announcement Time in macOS Big Sur
Using time announcements is a great way to make sure you stick to your deadlines on a daily basis. It also helps to be aware of time throughout the day, which is great for time tracking and management. Especially when you’re stuck at home all day. I will also talk about a neat automation that will automatically mute your Mac at night. In this way, you will not be disturbed by time announcements while you sleep.
How to Enable or Disable Announcement Time in macOS Big Sur
- Open System Preferences and click Dock and Menu Bar.
- Scroll down in the sidebar and select ‘Clock’.
- Here you will find an option to enable (or disable) the ‘Announce the time’ option.
- You can specify the time period in which you want time announcements to be made. You can set this in hourly, quarterly, and half-hourly timescales.
How to Customize Announcement Clock Sound on Mac
Now that you have the feature enabled, you may also want to customize the sound used for the announcement. Here’s how to do it.
- In the same menu, click on ‘Customize Sound…’.
- Click the ‘Audio’ drop-down menu.
- You will see installed sounds to choose from. Choose one of them. Or you can click ‘Customize…’.
- Here you can choose which sound to use from a large number of options. You can also use the ‘use enhanced sound’ option to make the sound more natural.
How to Automatically Mute Your Mac at Night
If you’re like me, you probably leave your Mac on during the day. However, thanks to this feature, you will receive time announcements even while you sleep at night. Fortunately, there’s an easy fix, thanks to great Mac apps like Keyboard Maestro.
- Open Keyboard Maestro (download) and select ‘Global Macro Group’ in the sidebar.
- Click the plus icon to create a new macro.
- Name your macro something like ‘Auto Mute’. Next, click on ‘New Trigger’.
- Select ‘Time of Day Trigger’ from the drop-down menu.
- Set the time you want the trigger to activate. As an example, I set the clock to 22. You can also choose the days you want the automation to run.
- Click on ‘New Action’.
- Select ‘System Actions’ in the categories and double click ‘Change System Sound Mute’ to add it to your automation.
That’s it, the automation will run at 10 pm on the days you choose and mute your Mac. Thus, you will not be disturbed by time announcements while in bed.
Use Time Announcements on Mac to Track Your Day
Automatic time announcements are a great way to keep track of your day. Plus, it’s the best way to remember to prepare lunch on time – something I tend to forget many times until I’m very hungry. So, do you use clock announcements in macOS Big Sur? Let us know in the comments. Also, if you have any questions, let us know and we will try to help you.
