Online timer

How to use the online timer

Type the length into the hours, minutes and seconds boxes and press Start (or just press Enter). You don't have to do the arithmetic: 90 in the minutes box becomes 1 hour 30 minutes, and ↑/↓ step a box by one (hold Shift for ten). The quick-start row — 1, 2, 3, 5, 10, 15, 20, 30, 45 and 60 minutes — starts a timer in one tap, which is the fastest way to set a 5 minute timer for a break or a 10 minute timer for a quiz.

Each timer shows a progress ring, the time left and the clock time it will finish. Pause freezes it exactly, Resume carries on from the same millisecond, +1 min extends it without losing your place and Reset returns it to the length you set. Click the timer's name to relabel it at any point.

The keyboard works too: Space starts or pauses the selected timer, R resets it, + adds a minute, F goes full screen, N adds a new timer and Esc silences a ringing alarm.

Running several timers at once

Cooking a roast with three sides, running stations in a classroom or juggling laundry and a video call? Press Add timer to put another card beside the first — up to twelve at once, each with its own label, length, alarm state and full-screen button. If the selected timer is already running, pressing Start or a preset automatically creates a new timer rather than overwriting the one in progress.

The browser tab always shows the timer that will end next, for example “3:12 Pasta (+2)”, where the number in brackets is how many other timers are running. When one finishes the title flashes Time's up! with its label, so you can spot it among a row of tabs.

If you need to measure how long something takes rather than count down, use the online stopwatch; for focused work blocks, the Pomodoro timer alternates work and breaks for you.

Why it stays accurate in a background tab

Many online timers count down by adding one second every time the browser runs a repeating timer. That drifts: browsers deliberately slow timers in hidden tabs to save battery — Chrome can delay them to once a minute after a tab has been hidden for five minutes — and a laptop that sleeps pauses them entirely. This timer never counts ticks. It records the moment you pressed Start and works out the time left from the system's high-resolution clock whenever it redraws, so it is right to the millisecond the moment you look.

The alarm is handled separately. When you start a timer, the finish sound is booked in advance on the Web Audio clock, which runs on the audio thread and is not throttled with the page. That means the alarm sounds on time even in a background tab that has not been allowed to run any code for a minute. A notification (if you turned Notify me on) and the flashing tab title follow as soon as the browser wakes the page.

Two honest limits: if the computer is asleep or the browser is closed, nothing on the page can make a sound — the timer will tell you it finished while you were away when you come back. And phones, particularly iPhones, suspend audio in background tabs, so keep the page on screen with Keep screen on ticked for anything important.

Alarm sounds, notifications and sharing

Choose between three alarms, all synthesised in your browser so nothing is downloaded: Soft chime (a descending three-note bell, good for offices and classrooms), Digital beeps (the classic kitchen-timer pattern, cuts through background noise) and Alarm bell (a rapid ringing bell for when you might be in another room). Press Test to hear one and set the volume slider. Whichever you pick repeats until you stop it, for up to 30 minutes.

Tick Notify me to get a system notification when a timer ends; the browser asks for permission once, and only then. If you previously blocked notifications, allow them again from the padlock or site settings icon next to the address bar. Keep screen on uses the Screen Wake Lock API to stop your phone or laptop dimming while a timer runs.

The copy-link button on each timer produces an address such as /online-timer/?t=10m&label=Tea. Anyone who opens it gets the same timer, ready to start. The t value accepts 90s, 25m, 1h30m, 1:30:00 or a plain number of minutes, and adding &start=1 starts it immediately — handy for a bookmark or a link on a classroom whiteboard. Boiling eggs? The dedicated egg timer works out the time for you.

Frequently asked questions