Write to milczi@gmail.com and describe what you expected and what happened instead. Include your device and its iOS or Android version if you can — it usually saves a round trip.
Most questions turn out to be one of the six below. If one of them fits, you have your answer straight away.
That is deliberate. A routine is a stretch of real time, not a screen: it keeps counting while you answer the door. On iPhone and iPad, the Lock Screen Live Activity and the Home Screen widget show where it has got to; on Android, the notification and the home-screen widget do. Cue sounds still play. Use Hold to stop to end a run early.
On iPhone and iPad, cues that fire while the app is in the background are delivered as local notifications, so they need notification permission. Allow notifications when the app asks, or turn them on in Settings → MeloTimer → Notifications. Also check the phone's silent switch and volume — a cue is a sound like any other.
On Android, the app plays the cues itself for as long as a routine runs, with or without notification permission — the permission only decides whether you see the notification with the current step. If a cue is silent there, check the volume.
HomeKit is on iPhone and iPad only; on Android, cues are sounds only. Home scene cues need two things. First, permission: Settings → Privacy & Security → HomeKit. Second, whole minutes — a routine can only use Home scenes when every step is a whole number of minutes and at least a minute long, because HomeKit automations fire on the clock minute. The routine editor says so when it applies, and rounding your steps fixes it.
Widgets refresh on the system's schedule, not instantly. Opening the app updates what the widget reads. If it still looks stale, remove the widget and add it again.
Restore the new device from a backup of the old one and your routines come with it, because they are part of the app's data. On Android, that is Android's own backup to your Google account, if you have it turned on. There is no account and no cloud sync, so routines do not appear on a second device on their own — that is the same reason nothing about you is ever uploaded.
MeloTimer checks whether the version you have is still one we support. Most of the time it finds nothing and says nothing. When it offers an update you can dismiss it and carry on, and it will not ask again for that release. When it says an update is required, that version had a fault worth taking out of use, and updating from the App Store, or from Google Play on Android, is the way on. The check needs a connection — with no internet, the app simply runs as it always did.
Bugs, confusing wording, a sound you wish existed, a language you would like the app in — all of it is welcome at milczi@gmail.com. It is a small app and mail is read by the person who makes it.