Online Timers
Set it and leave it. Every timer here counts from the clock rather than by ticking, so switching tabs or locking the phone cannot make it drift, and the alarm is scheduled ahead of time so it still rings on the second.
05:00
Working and studying
Timing and intervals
Set a number of minutes
- 1 minute Sixty seconds, with an alarm that lands on the second.
- 2 minutes Two minutes — the toothbrushing standard, and the length of most short tasks.
- 3 minutes Three minutes — soft-boiled eggs, steeping tea and boxing rounds.
- 5 minutes Five minutes — the default short break and the standard "just a moment".
- 10 minutes Ten minutes — long enough to get somewhere, short enough to agree to.
- 15 minutes A quarter of an hour — the long break, and the length of a real dent.
- 20 minutes Twenty minutes — the eye-rest rule, the nap ceiling and a third of an hour.
- 30 minutes Half an hour — the default meeting, the default workout, the default oven.
- 45 minutes Forty-five minutes — a lesson, a half of football, a full gym session.
- 1 hour Sixty minutes — an exam, a roast, or a full hour held to.
Counting down to a date
About these timers
A timer looks like the simplest thing on a website and most of them are quietly wrong. The reason is that browsers deliberately slow down background tabs to save battery, so a timer that counts by adding up its own ticks loses time the moment you look at something else — and a twenty-five minute pomodoro can come back several minutes short.
These do not count. Each one records the moment it should finish and then reads the clock, so the tick rate only decides how smoothly the digits move and never what they say. Switch tabs for ten minutes and it is exactly ten minutes further on when you come back.
The alarm is handled the same way. Rather than waiting for a JavaScript timer that a background tab may never run, the beep is scheduled in advance on the browser's audio clock, which runs independently. On a phone the screen is held awake while a timer runs, and released the moment it stops.
Questions
Does the timer keep running if I switch tabs?
Yes, and it stays accurate. It works out the time remaining from the clock rather than by counting, so background throttling has no effect on the result. Come back after ten minutes and it is exactly ten minutes further on.
Will the alarm still sound if the tab is hidden?
It should. The beep is scheduled on the browser's audio clock the moment you press start, which is independent of the JavaScript timers that get throttled. If your phone or browser suspends the tab entirely, allow notifications as well and you will get one either way.
Will my screen turn off during a timer?
Not while one is running, on browsers that support it. A screen wake lock is taken when you press start and released as soon as you pause, reset or finish, so it never holds the screen on longer than it needs to.
Can I link to a timer of a particular length?
Yes. Add ?m= and the number of minutes to any timer here — /timer?m=7 gives a seven minute countdown, and ?s= adds seconds. That makes any duration shareable, not just the ones listed.
Is there a keyboard shortcut?
Space starts and pauses, R resets, and on the stopwatch L records a lap. They work anywhere on the page except while you are typing in a field.
Does anything I set get sent anywhere?
No. The timers run entirely in your own browser and no duration, lap or setting ever leaves it.
What happens if I close the tab?
The timer stops. Nothing is stored on a server and nothing runs once the page is gone, so a timer you need to survive a closed tab wants your phone's own clock app instead.