The ingenious design trick in the iPhone's alarm left me utterly astonished

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For several years now, iPhone users have been puzzled by an unusual behaviour in the alarm time picker. Regardless of whether the clock format is 12-hour or 24-hour, scrolling beyond the upper or lower limit on the time wheels requires moving in the opposite direction on both the minute and hour lists. This quirk, most notably demonstrated by the 4:39 alarm clock mystery, has persisted without a resolution.

The first signs of this mystery were observed as early as 2018, with a user sharing their findings on the Apple Community forum. However, the issue remained unanswered. The oddity was also reported by Wccftech around the same time. In the following years, the 4:39 alarm clock mystery became a topic of discussion among users on platforms like Reddit, where a screenshot shared on the platform sparked a reaction.

The time wheels on the alarm time picker can be thought of as a straight line, rather than an endless circular loop, with numbers repeating a few times before reaching the limit. This behaviour is likely an unintended glitch in the scrolling mechanism of the time selection wheel rather than a designed cutoff.

When scrolled down for about 10-15 seconds, the alarm time picker stops at 4:39 or 16:39, depending on the clock format. Scrolling up on the alarm time picker leads to a blank space once the timer hits 1:00.

The persistence of this issue suggests that the UI design of the alarm time picker on iPhones may be more complex than it appears. Despite the time picker being highly regarded, this oddity indicates that not everything about its design is seamless.

This software limitation or bug in the iOS time selection interface has yet to receive an official detailed explanation from Apple. Nevertheless, the 4:39 alarm clock mystery remains a fascinating anomaly in the world of iPhone's UI design.