Timer
Set a countdown timer for any duration. Perfect for cooking, workouts, study sessions, or any activity that needs time management.
Quick Presets
Set custom time or use quick presets. Timer persists across sessions and will sound an alarm when complete. Perfect for cooking, workouts, study sessions, or any timed activity.
How to set a countdown timer
Pick a duration, press Start, and the timer beeps when it reaches zero.
- 01
Pick a preset or set your own time
Presets cover 1, 5, 10, 15 and 30 minutes and 1 hour. For anything else, use the plus and minus buttons on hours, minutes and seconds. The longest timer is 23 hours, 59 minutes and 59 seconds.
- 02
Start, and keep the volume up
When the countdown hits zero you get a short beep and an on-screen "Timer finished!" notice. The beep is half a second long, so if you're out of the room, turn your volume up before starting.
- 03
Pause, resume or reset as you go
Pause holds the remaining time. Reset goes back to the duration you set. If you reload the page or close and reopen it, a running timer picks up where it should be, since the start time is saved in your browser.
How the countdown keeps time
Many online timers count down by subtracting one second every time a one-second tick fires. That drifts, because browsers delay ticks when the page is busy or hidden. This timer works out an end time when you press Start, then on every tick it calculates how much is left from the real clock. Even if ticks are skipped, the display catches up to the right value the next time it updates.
The alarm is the part that can be late. Chrome and Edge heavily throttle timers in tabs that have been hidden for more than about five minutes, sometimes running them only once a minute. So a 20-minute timer in a background tab can beep up to a minute after it's done. For cooking or anything where a minute matters, keep the tab visible or open it in its own small window.