Everything FulwaveTimer can do, in the order you'll actually use it.

Overview

A FulwaveTimer session (also called a playlist) is a list of stages played back to back. Each stage has its own name, duration, color, and, this is the part most timers skip, its own sound: an audio track you own, or text the app reads aloud in a voice you choose.

That's the whole model. Everything else in the app is about building stages, playing them reliably in the background, and getting a session onto another device or another person's phone.

Quick start

The fastest way to see how FulwaveTimer works is to run a template, then build your own.

1. Open the Library tab and tap the HIIT Circuit sample session. A fresh install starts with it and Pomodoro Focus already saved.
2. Tap Play. Watch the countdown ring, the current stage name, and the queue of what's next.
3. Lock your phone. The session keeps running, with a live countdown on the Lock Screen. This is the Live Activity, covered in Lock Screen & widget, along with the optional alert at each stage change.
4. Go to the Build tab and tap … in the top corner, then New Playlist to start from scratch, or New from Template… to begin from one of the built-in routines.

Building a session

From the Build tab, a session starts empty and grows one stage at a time.

Add and reorder stages

Tap Add Stage to append a new one. To reorder, tap Edit and drag a stage by its handle. The Player always runs stages top to bottom.

Set duration and repeats

Each stage has its own duration in hours, minutes, and seconds, and can repeat a set number of times on its own before moving to the next stage. The whole session can also loop as a unit, which is useful for Pomodoro cycles or interval rounds where the same sequence of stages repeats several times.

Give it a color

Tap a stage's color swatch to tag it. Stage colors show up in the stage list, the Player's queue, and, if the session was designed in Fulwave Designer on Mac, carry over automatically. Leaving a stage's color unset makes it inherit your app-wide accent color, so older sessions don't suddenly look different.

Start fast with templates

Five templates (Pomodoro Focus, HIIT Circuit, Box Breathing, Meditation, and Sleep Wind-Down) are available from the Build tab: tap … then New from Template…. Start from one and adjust the stages instead of starting blank.

Audio & voice per stage

Open a stage from the Build tab to set what plays during it.

Two ways to fill a stage with sound

• An audio track you own, imported from Files, iCloud Drive, or your Apple Music library.
• Spoken text: type what you want said, and choose a voice and speaking rate; the app reads it aloud when the stage plays.

Transitions: how a stage's audio starts and ends

Each stage sets its own Start and End behavior, independently:

Alerts: tones, haptics, and countdowns

Layer on top of a stage's main audio: a start or transition alert tone, a haptic buzz on stage change, a spoken 10-second warning, and a spoken 3-2-1 countdown right before the stage ends.

On-screen text & cues

If a stage's spoken text is really a script, such as a speech you're rehearsing, the Player can display it as you go.

Turn on a stage's on-screen text and it scrolls on the Player in time with the reading, like a small teleprompter. It's meant to be glanced at while you practice, not read line by line, so keep the window small and the pace natural.

Voice-overs from an imported session

A session built in Fulwave Designer can send a spoken phrase as text rather than mixing it into the stage's audio. When a stage carries one, its editor gains a Voice-Over section, and the phrase is yours to adjust:

• Voice: read it in any voice installed on your iPhone, including one in another language. Add voices in iOS Settings → Accessibility → Spoken Content → Voices.
• Speed: slow it down or speed it up.
• Speak Aloud: turn it off for display only. The words still appear on the Player, nothing is spoken.

These stay editable even when the session is locked. The words themselves belong to the author and are read-only, but how they reach you (which voice, how fast, or silently) is yours.

Playing a session

The Player tab is the now-playing view. It is built from widgets: a clock for the current stage, the stage name and color, transport controls, the queue of stages, and more. You can rearrange, resize, restyle, add and remove them to suit the way you use it.

Customizing the Player

Tap the Customize button (the sliders icon) at the top right of the Player. The widgets get a dashed outline and you can change them freely; tap Done when you're finished. Your layout is saved automatically.

• Move: touch and hold a widget, then drag it onto the widget whose place you want. Or tap its ⋯ button and choose Move Earlier or Move Later.
• Resize: tap ⋯ and pick a size: Full Width, Medium (half the width), or Small (a third of the width on iPad and other wide screens; on iPhone it matches Medium). Widgets of half width or less sit side by side.
• Remove: tap the red −, or choose Remove from the ⋯ menu.
• Add: tap + to open the widget list. The widgets are Session Header, Stage Name, Track Info, Stage Text, Clock, Stage Dots, Transport Controls and Queue. You can add a second (or third) Clock, for example in a different style; every other widget can appear once.
• Layouts: the menu at the top left offers ready-made arrangements: Classic, Minimal, Big Clock, Teleprompter and Gym. Choosing one replaces your current layout, so start from one and adjust it. Classic is the default.

Stage Text and Track Info only take up room while the current stage has something to show. A stage with no text or no audio track simply closes the gap. In edit mode they stay visible as a placeholder so you can still move or remove them.

Widget settings

Tap ⋯ → Block Settings… on any widget to set its size and turn its Card Background on or off. Some widgets have more:

• Clock: choose a style from a gallery of previews, a lit color (App Accent, Red, Amber, Green, Cyan or White), and whether LED-type styles glow.
• Transport Controls: Classic (round play button), Big Buttons (wide, easy to hit with a wet or tired hand) or Compact.
• Queue: show all stages, or limit it to a number of rows (1–12) and let it scroll inside its widget.

Clock styles

• Ring: the original countdown ring with the percentage.
• LED: a glowing seven-segment readout, like a digital alarm clock.
• Vacuum Display: a cyan seven-segment display on a dark panel, in the style of old audio gear.
• Flip Clock: digit cards that flip as the time changes.
• Analog: a clock face whose hands show the time remaining, with a thin arc for progress through the stage.
• Pie Timer: a wedge that shrinks as the stage runs out, with the time on top.
• Progress Bar: large digits over a bar.
• Minimal: just the digits, as large as the widget allows.

Your layout belongs to the device you set it up on. It is not part of a session, so it applies to every session you play, isn't included when you share a .fws file, and doesn't sync through iCloud. With Reduce Motion on, clock animations such as the flip are turned off, and VoiceOver reads each clock as a single item: the stage name and the time remaining.

Playback-Only view

When you just want to press play without touching editing controls, turn on Playback Only in Settings → App Mode. It hides the Build tab and the editing shortcuts, leaving a simpler play-and-library view. Your sessions aren't changed. Turn it off any time to edit again.

Controls everywhere

Play, pause, and skip a session from the Lock Screen or from headphone controls, without unlocking your phone.

Lock Screen & Home Screen widget

FulwaveTimer is built to be followed without looking at the app.

Live Activity

Start a session and lock your phone. A Live Activity (and Dynamic Island, on supported iPhones) shows a glanceable countdown for the current stage right on the Lock Screen. When the session finishes, the card stays on the Lock Screen until you dismiss it or open the app, so you'll see it even if the phone was in your pocket.

Notifications

Two optional alerts live in Settings → Lock Screen:

• Stage Change Alerts: off by default. Turn it on and each new stage announces itself by name, with a sound, so you know what's coming without checking the screen.
• Session Complete Alert: on by default. A backstop for the end of the whole session. You'll only see it if the app was suspended or shut down and couldn't announce the finish itself.

The media player card on the Lock Screen is added by iOS for any app playing audio and can't be turned off. It's also what keeps the timer running in the background.

Quick Start widget

Add the FulwaveTimer widget to your Home Screen to launch a specific session with one tap, skipping the Library entirely.

Apple Watch & Apple Health

The Watch app is a companion. It mirrors and controls a session, whichever device started it.

• A live countdown ring on your wrist, with stage name and transport controls.
• Haptics fire at every stage change, even with the screen off.
• Turn on workout recording to save the session to Apple Health, with heart rate, active energy, and the workout type you set on the session. The toggle is the heart icon at the top-right of the Watch app: solid red means recording is on, a slashed heart means it's off. It's not a heart-rate sensor switch. The watch reads your heart rate during a workout either way; this only decides whether the session is saved.

Health data stays in Apple Health on your device. See the Privacy Policy for details.

Library & iCloud sync

Every session you save lives in the Library tab.

• Search and color-tag your saved sessions to keep a growing library organized.
• iCloud sync keeps your library current across your iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch, privately, through your own iCloud account.
• Automatic on-device backups let you restore your library with one tap if you ever need to.

What syncs, and what stays put

Your sessions sync: names, stages, times, colors, settings. The audio files you import yourself don't. They stay on the device you added them to. So a session you built on your iPhone using your own audio will appear on your iPad, but its stages there will show missing audio until you add those files on the iPad too.

Sessions you imported as a .fws file are different. They bring their audio back with them. See Sharing sessions.

Automatic backups are kept on the device, deliberately. They're your safety net if something ever goes wrong with syncing, so they don't depend on it. That also means deleting the app removes them, so the most recent snapshot is kept in your iCloud account as well. It's listed under In iCloud in Settings → Backups → Manage Backups, and it's the one still there after a reinstall. Backups cover your sessions, not your audio files.

Sharing sessions (.fws files)

A .fws file bundles a session together with its audio into one file you can send to anyone.

Exporting

From the Library, export a session as a .fws file. Anyone can open and play a session they receive, with no FulwaveTimer account and no server. Pro is required to export, and keeps every session you import permanently in your library.

Locked sessions

When designing a session, in FulwaveTimer or in the companion Fulwave Designer app on Mac, the author can lock it before sharing. A locked session lets the person who receives it adjust times, haptics, alert sounds, voice cues, their own start/end shortcuts, and how they file it in their own library, but not the media, stages, or transitions the author built. It's a client-side policy for keeping a session intact, not copy protection.

Importing

Open a .fws file (from Files, AirDrop, or an email attachment) and FulwaveTimer adds it to your library, respecting whatever lock policy the author set.

Where a session's audio goes

A session brings its audio with it, sometimes a dozen files, and from Fulwave Designer often baked stage mixes named for stages in someone else's session. That audio is kept out of your Audio Library, so what you see there stays the audio you chose and added yourself.

It isn't hidden: Settings → Audio Library has a Session Audio group holding every file that arrived inside a session, and the track picker has the same group when you're building a stage. Each of those files is deleted along with the session that brought it, so if you use one in a session of your own, it will go missing when you delete the session it came from.

A session puts its own audio back

Sessions sync between your devices; their audio doesn't travel with them. On its own that would mean an imported session arriving on your iPad, or returning after you delete and reinstall the app, with nothing to play. And a locked session can't be repaired by hand, because its media isn't editable.

So when you import a .fws, FulwaveTimer keeps a copy of that file in your iCloud account. If the session ever turns up without its audio, it rebuilds itself from that copy and tells you it has done so. Nothing to turn on, and any stage times you'd adjusted are kept.

If there's no copy to work from (a session imported before this feature, or a device not signed in to iCloud), hold the session in the Library and choose Restore Media…, then pick the .fws file it came from. A session missing its audio says so in the Library, so you can tell at a glance which ones need it.

These copies use your iCloud storage rather than your device's. Settings → Backups shows how much space they take and lets you remove them. Your sessions keep playing afterwards, but they'll no longer restore their audio on their own.

Shortcuts & Focus

FulwaveTimer adds a Play Playlist action to the Shortcuts app. iOS doesn't let apps change your Focus directly, but Shortcuts can, so you pair the two: a shortcut sets the Focus, then starts the session.

Turn on a Focus when a session starts

1. Open the Shortcuts app and tap + to create a shortcut.
2. Add the action Set Focus, choose a Focus (for example Work or Do Not Disturb), and set it to On.
3. Add the action Play Playlist (search “FulwaveTimer”) and pick the session.
4. Name the shortcut and run it. It sets the Focus, then starts the session.
5. Optional: add Set Focus → Off after a Wait action, or turn the Focus off manually when you're done.

Set a Focus from inside the app

Prefer to just press Play in the app? Make a shortcut that does Set Focus → On, then in the Build tab set the session's Run Shortcut at Start to that shortcut's name, and Run Shortcut at End to a “Focus Off” shortcut. Playing the session now turns the Focus on, and finishing turns it off (the app briefly switches to Shortcuts each time).

Set a Focus when a session ends

1. In Shortcuts, make a shortcut that does what you want at the end, for example Set Focus → Off (and maybe play a sound). Name it, for example “End Session”.
2. In FulwaveTimer's Build tab, open the session and set Run Shortcut at End to that shortcut's exact name.
3. When the session finishes, the app runs that shortcut.

End a Focus on time, even locked

Your Run Shortcut at Start shortcut receives the session length in minutes as its input. Use it so the system schedules the Focus turn-off, with no end shortcut needed:

1. In your start shortcut, add Set Focus → On and tap the small › on the action.
2. Change Until Turned Off to Custom Duration, then set the duration to the magic variable Shortcut Input (minutes).
3. Set the session's Run Shortcut at Start to this shortcut. The Focus now turns off exactly when the session ends, locked or not.

Sessions set to repeat forever have no defined end, so no input is sent for them.

Run with Siri

Once a session has been used once, just say: “Play [session name] in FulwaveTimer.”

Personalizing FulwaveTimer

• Accent, background, and text colors: set your own instead of the default theme.
• Per-stage colors override the app accent just for that stage, everywhere it appears.
• Your Player layout: rearrange, resize and restyle the Player's widgets, and pick a clock style (LED, flip, analog and more). See Playing a session.
• Dynamic Type and VoiceOver are supported throughout the app.

Fulwave Pro Pro

FulwaveTimer is free to use and keeps a small library at no cost. Fulwave Pro unlocks:

• An unlimited session library.
• Session export: bundling a session with its audio into a shareable .fws file.

The free version keeps 2 sessions across relaunches, and holds up to 4 at once while the app is open. The extra room is reachable by importing, so you can always open a .fws someone sends you. Anything past the first two, and every imported session, is cleared at the next launch; a full backup is saved first, so unlocking Pro and using Restore Backup brings it all back intact. Nothing is ever removed without warning.

Pro is available as a monthly subscription with a 7-day free trial, or a one-time lifetime purchase. Manage or cancel a subscription any time in Settings → [your name] → Subscriptions on your device.

FAQ & troubleshooting

Support

Questions, bug reports, or feature requests: use the support form.

When reporting a playback or Lock Screen issue, sharing the on-device diagnostics log helps. Find it under Settings → Diagnostics → Share. Privacy details are in the Privacy Policy.