For an embarrassingly long time I believed the iPhone could not repeat a reminder every hour. I searched the Clock app, gave up, and blamed Apple. The option exists. It just stays invisible until you perform one specific step, and nothing in the interface tells you which one.
The Reminders app does it, reluctantly
- Open Reminders and create a new reminder. Give it a name you will actually obey, like Stand up or Drink water.
- Tap the reminder, then the small info button to its right.
- Turn on Time and pick a starting time. This is the step that matters. Until a time is set, the hourly option simply does not appear anywhere.
- Now tap Repeat, and there it is: Hourly.
From then on the reminder fires every hour. Two quirks are worth knowing about. First, Reminders treats each hour as a task, so every notification expects to be marked complete. Swipe a few away without doing that and you accumulate an overdue list with a red badge, which turns a gentle nudge into a small guilt engine. Second, the hourly repeat wants the reminder to live in an iCloud list. If yours is stored in an email account's list instead, the option can stay hidden no matter how many times you set the time.
Or just ask Siri
Saying "remind me to stretch every hour starting at 9 a.m." builds the same reminder in one sentence. Siri quietly handles the hidden time step for you, which makes this the least annoying method Apple offers.
The Clock app is the wrong tool
Alarms only ring at fixed times, so an hourly setup means creating one alarm for every waking hour. Twelve alarms, twelve labels, and when a meeting starts you get to switch them off one by one. I tried this once. Once.
Shortcuts, for the determined
Personal automations in the Shortcuts app trigger at a fixed time of day, so a truly hourly setup means building a separate automation for each hour you are awake. It works, people really do it, and you will resent every minute of the setup. I mention it for completeness.
If you wear an Apple Watch
The watch has a lovely chime feature hidden in its Accessibility settings, with a choice of bells or birdsong. I wrote about it separately in how to make your iPhone chime every hour, because it deserves its own page.
Why I ended up building an app for this
Hourlybird exists because I wanted the reminder without the task. It plays a short bird chime on the hour, handles hydration and stretching reminders, and has a pause button for meetings. Nothing ever piles up in an overdue list, because there is no list. It is free on the App Store. I made it, so weigh this paragraph accordingly.
Whichever method you pick, the notification is not really the point. The point is the half second after it, when you look up from whatever had swallowed you and decide what the next hour is for.