Cigarette & Vape Counter How to space out cigarettes: a timer for the time since your last one
There is no safe waiting time between cigarettes, but stretching the gap is a practical way to smoke fewer. Cigarette & Vape Counter shows the time since your last one live on the Home screen, and a Spacing goal of 30 to 240 minutes fills a bar until you reach it.
How long should you wait between cigarettes?
Honestly: no gap makes smoking safe. What the gap changes is the count. If you usually light up every 60 minutes and push that to 90, you smoke fewer in a waking day without a fixed daily limit.
The time-since-last-cigarette timer
The top card on Home shows the time since your last logged cigarette, in days, hours, minutes and seconds. It is worked out from your entries, so a cigarette you back-date with Details and Time counts at the moment you actually smoked it, not when you opened the app.
In Both mode, cigarettes and vape each have their own timer; switch the type at the top of Home.
How do you set a spacing goal?
- Open Settings and find Spacing goal.
- Pick a gap: 30, 45, 60, 90, 120, 180 or 240 minutes (or Off).
- Back on Home, a bar under the timer fills as time passes, with the minutes left to go.
- When the bar is full, the card says Spacing goal reached.
What the timer shows: a worked example
| Item | Value | How |
|---|---|---|
| Timer | 1 hrs 4 min 30 sec | 3,870 seconds since the last entry |
| Bar | about 72% full | 3,870 ÷ 5,400 seconds |
| Label | 26 min to your spacing goal | 1,530 seconds left, rounded up to whole minutes |
Stretch the gap step by step
- Start near your current gap. If you smoke about every hour, choose 60, not 180.
- When you reach it most of the time for a few days, move up: 60, then 90, then 120.
- Log every cigarette as you smoke it. A late entry resets the timer at the wrong moment; use Details to set the real Time.
- If a craving hits before the goal, try the 3-minute craving timer on Home (Having a craving?).
Keep the timer in view
On iOS 18.6 or later, the Smoke-Free Timer widget shows the time since your last one on your home screen, in small, medium or large size.
What it does not do
- It does not send a notification when you reach the spacing goal. Check the bar or the widget.
- The goal is a single gap for the whole day; there are no separate goals for mornings or evenings.
- If you quit, the same timer becomes your smoke-free time, and Milestones light up as it passes set points.
Questions and answers
Does the timer keep running if I close the app?
What happens to the timer if I log a cigarette from an hour ago?
Is the spacing goal free?
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