5 Minute Timer
Five minutes, with an alarm at the end. The default length of a break, a warm-up, a tidy-up and everything anyone has ever described as taking a moment.
Counting down
05:00
Five minutes
Five minutes is the most requested timer length there is, and the reason is that it is the shortest span that feels like a real amount of time. A minute is an instant and half an hour is a commitment; five minutes is long enough to do something and short enough to agree to without thinking about it.
It is the default break in almost every work method, the standard warm-up, and the length of the tidy-up sprint that people use to start on a room they are avoiding. In each case the timer is doing the same job: turning an open-ended obligation into a bounded one, which is the difference between starting and not starting.
It is also the least honest phrase in the language. "Five more minutes" and "this will only take five minutes" are both, in practice, estimates of something else entirely — usually fifteen. Running an actual five minutes over the top of one of those claims is a cheap and slightly brutal way to calibrate your own estimates.
Where it genuinely matters is a break. A break that runs to twenty minutes does not work as a break; it works as a stop, and starting again afterwards costs more than the rest was worth. An alarm at five is what keeps a break from turning into one.
What people use it for
- The short break in a pomodoro or work cycle
- A warm-up before training
- A five-minute tidy-up on a room you are putting off
- Meditation and breathing exercises
- Timeboxing a decision that is being over-thought
How it works
Already set to five minutes — Start, or Space, is all it needs.
The finishing moment is fixed when you press start, so a five minute break spent in another tab is five minutes rather than the seven a counting timer would give you. That is exactly the case this length is used for.
The tab title counts down too, so it tells you how long is left from the tab strip.
Both fields are editable, so this is a seven minute or a four and a half minute timer without leaving the page.
- Space
- Start or pause.
- R
- Reset.
- Tab title
- Shows the time left, so a background tab still tells you.
Questions
How do I set a five minute timer?
It is already set. Press Start, or press Space.
Will it warn me before the end?
The progress bar and the digits are the warning. There is a single alarm at zero rather than a countdown of beeps, on the grounds that a five minute break interrupted twice is not much of a break.
Does it work in a background tab?
Yes, and this is the length where that matters most. Breaks are taken in other tabs, and a timer that counts its own ticks loses time exactly then.
Can I set six or seven minutes?
Change the minutes field to any number up to a day, and add seconds if you need them.
Is five minutes a good break length?
For a break inside a working block, yes — long enough to stand up and look away, short enough that getting going again is easy. After two or three hours you want a proper break of fifteen to thirty minutes instead.
Can I share a five minute timer with someone?
Send them this page, or use the address form: /timer?m=5 opens the general timer already set to five minutes, and any other number works the same way.
Does it keep going if my phone locks?
Yes. The screen is held awake while it runs where the browser supports it, and if the screen does turn off the finishing time is unaffected.
Is anything I set stored?
No. It runs entirely in your browser and nothing about it is sent anywhere or kept after you close the tab.