Pro-tip: you can set alarms for your Android phone using desktop Google search

If you’re anything like me, at some point during your day you’ll consciously think to yourself about what time you’d like to get up the next day. You’ll think about it, but then just forget to set an alarm on your phone before you go to sleep and end up waking at a different time than you’d like. Well, there’s a neat card in Google search that can be evoked with a simply query that may help you with this problem.

Typing “set alarm for [time]” into a Google search and pressing enter will bring up the card above, which then allows you to choose a device to send the alarm to. After clicking “Set alarm on your phone,” my Nexus 5 immediately emitted a sound and the default Clock app set an alarm for tomorrow at 7AM.

This is similar to the search function that allows you to send reminders to your phone (i.e. “set reminder to call mom”), but those only added cards to Google Now – this function actually engages with a completely different app on the phone. Unlike the Now cards, though, this only seems to work with Android and not iOS, which wouldn’t be surprising as Google doesn’t have nearly as much control over that OS than it does over Android. I’m not 100% positive on the Android-exclusivity, however, and will revise this if I learn otherwise. Your device also obviously has to be linked to the same Google account you’re logged into on the web, and the company has a handy page with instructions on how to set that up.

Another similar function we’re aware of is the “send directions” query, which enables you to send to your phone a place along with navigation directions to it from your device, and “find my phone” which locates your device.

Have you seen any other neat Google search queries that can be used to perform tasks on your phone like this one? Let us know!