30 Minute Timer
Half an hour, with an alarm at the end. The default length of a meeting, a workout and an oven step, and the point at which people start planning around a block rather than fitting it in.
Counting down
30:00
Half an hour
Half an hour is where a block stops being something you squeeze in and starts being something you plan. It is the default slot in a diary, the shortest workout most people count as a workout, and long enough that what you do with it is a decision rather than a reflex.
It is also the length that expands most reliably. A thirty minute meeting fills thirty minutes whether or not it has thirty minutes of content, because the slot is what was booked. The same is true of a thirty minute task. Running a visible timer is the usual counter to that, and the effect is noticeable — a meeting with a countdown on screen finishes early far more often than one without.
In the kitchen it is the commonest single oven step there is: a tray of vegetables, a baked dish, most cakes, a joint's first stage. It is also long enough that leaving the room is normal, which is precisely why the timing has to survive a phone going to sleep in another room.
As a work block, thirty minutes suits work you can pick up immediately and is short for work you have to get into. If you find yourself resetting it repeatedly, the fifty minute study blocks are usually the better shape.
What people use it for
- A workout, a run or a class
- Roasting, baking and most single oven steps
- A standard meeting slot, with the clock visible
- A block of admin or email
- A longer break or a walk
How it works
Set to thirty minutes. Press Start, or Space.
Half an hour is long enough that a counting timer would be measurably wrong by the end of it in a background tab. This one fixes the finishing moment at the start and reads the clock, so it is exact regardless of what the tab has been doing.
The tab title counts down as well, which is the practical way to check a kitchen timer from a laptop with a dozen tabs open.
Change the minutes field for forty, ninety or anything else up to a day.
- Space
- Start or pause.
- R
- Reset.
- Tab title
- Shows the time left, so a background tab still tells you.
Questions
Is half an hour enough for a workout?
For most purposes, yes. Thirty minutes of genuine work beats an hour of wandering between machines, and it is short enough to actually happen on a busy day, which is the part that decides whether training continues.
How do I stop a meeting overrunning?
Put a countdown where everyone can see it. A booked slot fills itself; a visible clock changes how people use it.
Can I trust it as a kitchen timer?
Yes. The finishing moment is fixed when you start and the alarm is scheduled then, so leaving the room, locking the phone or switching tabs makes no difference to when it goes off.
Can I set 45 or 90 minutes?
Change the minutes field to any figure up to 1,440. There are dedicated pages for forty-five and sixty minutes as well.
Does it warn me before the end?
The progress bar shows how far through it is. There is one alarm, at zero.
Can I pause it partway?
Yes. Pausing keeps what is left and starting again continues from that point, so the total running time is still exactly thirty minutes.
Will my phone screen stay on for half an hour?
While the timer runs, on browsers that support the wake lock — and it is released the moment the timer stops rather than being held indefinitely. If the screen does turn off, the alarm still sounds on time.