I have a Galaxy Watch 4 Classic. I started using the timer more often recently to count down a few hours at a time. I don't need to have it visible on the screen, so I hide it.
The problem is, the timer will sometimes just show up on my watch, completely unprompted. Which is an issue, because an active timer drains the battery hard.
I can't figure out how to force the watch to stop doing that. I looked this issue up and saw a mention about "routines", but I don't know where to see or access them. Apparently it could be part of Bixby, but I am not using Bixby (I don't even have it configured).
If I want the timer to be visible all the time, then I open it and leave it in the foreground.
If I do not want the timer to be visible all the time, then I press the Home button to hide it.
If I want to hide the timer only for a moment, then I press the Home button, do what I want to do, then re-open the timer.
@kamild_I was also hoping to get the countdown timer to leave me alone until it hits 0s and goes off - my thoughts on how it should work are the same as you've outlined previously. Found this forum after finally trying to search for a solution instead of poking around all the settings.
It's unfortunate that there doesn't seem to be a way to get this to work in what I would consider an intuitive and unobtrusive way. Not a fan of telling the time only via the small preview time on the countdown screen or having to hit the home button again. And given that I need to set multiple consecutive timers throughout the day and they can all vary in starting time the timer function seemed perfect except for this flaw.
Have you had success with using and editing reminders? My initial thought is that it sounds like a pain when the timer function literally fulfills the purpose in the simplest way, but just seems to be inflexibly needy in how upfront it is when turning on the watch face.
Thank you, I kind of needed to hear that after the insanity I have had to deal with in this topic.
I tried using reminders, but they weren't as convenient as just setting the timer, so I'm not using them. I wanted to try and search if there are any third party stopwatch/timer apps I could download from Play Store that would work the way they should work, but I haven't had the time to play with that yet.
All good mate - chiming in to give an opinion outside the frustrating echo chamber you've been hearing is half of the reason I actually made an account and posted.
Fair enough, hopefully it works out when you get the chance to look into it. My very brief searches in a similar vein didn't turn up much, but admittedly I didn't search too hard. After some compounded frustrations on this and some other AOD/screen waking stuff, I've ultimately just bought a dumb watch that has a countdown feature that it won't fight me on.
I've actually been using Google's Clock app on my watch for the last 3 days, and it seems to work great - no unwanted behavior, works just like it should.
