Online timer

What this timer does

The online timer on this page counts down from a duration you set, in hours, minutes and seconds. Press Start and the count begins. The tab title updates as the timer runs so you can leave it in a background tab and still see the remaining time at a glance. When the count reaches zero, the page plays a short beep using the Web Audio API and the status line shows "Time up".

There's no setup beyond entering the duration. No accounts, no notifications permission, no audio file to load.

Setting the duration

Hours, minutes and seconds are independent number inputs. You can set 90 minutes by entering 90 in the minutes field, or 1 hour and 30 minutes by splitting it; both produce the same countdown. The maximum sensible duration is bounded by the inputs (99 hours), which covers any timer use case shorter than four days.

For longer counts, point our how-long-until tool at a specific date and time. The countdown is the same flip-clock and updates the URL as you type.

Pause and resume

Pressing Start while the timer is running pauses it. Pressing Start again resumes from where it paused. The remaining time is held in memory between pause and resume; reloading the page clears it. The Reset button zeros the timer and re-enables the input fields so you can set a new duration.

The beep at zero

When the timer reaches zero, the page synthesises a short sine-wave beep using the Web Audio API. There's no audio file and no autoplay hack. The Web Audio API requires a prior user gesture before audio can play, which is satisfied when you press Start. If you mute your tab or your system audio, the beep is suppressed but the visual "Time up" status still appears.

If the tab is in the background when the timer fires, the tab title flips to "⏰ time up" so the change is visible in the tab strip. Browsers vary on whether they allow background audio; mainstream desktop browsers do.

Use cases

Common uses for a timer like this: cooking and kitchen timing, Pomodoro-style work blocks (25 minutes work, 5 minutes break), short exercise intervals like a one-minute plank or a three-minute round, meditation sessions, public-speaking practice, kids' screen time, brewing tea or coffee, baby naps.

For very short interval timing, a few seconds of countdown, the resolution of the seconds display is enough. For higher-precision interval work, our stopwatch page has hundredth-of-a-second precision.

How accuracy is preserved across tab throttling

Browsers slow down timer callbacks in background tabs to save battery. A naïve countdown that subtracted one second from a stored value every tick would drift heavily in the background. The timer on this page avoids that by storing an end time (a performance.now() stamp), not a remaining-duration. Each frame it subtracts "now" from the end time and shows the difference. When you bring the tab back, the displayed time is correct because the end time hasn't moved.

Other time tools on the site

For countdowns to a recurring weekday and time, the named countdown pages are the right tool. For any one-off date and time, the how-long-until tool takes a specific target. For counting up rather than down, see the stopwatch. For age and birthday calculations, see the age calculator and birthday countdown.

Why a Pomodoro timer is just a regular timer

The Pomodoro Technique, popularised by Francesco Cirillo in the 1980s, breaks work into 25-minute focus blocks separated by short breaks. There are dedicated Pomodoro apps with cycle tracking, statistics, and gamification. They're useful if you want the structure, but the timing piece is identical to any other 25-minute countdown.

If you want the bare minimum, set this timer to 25 minutes, press Start, and work until the beep. Then set it to five minutes for the break. After four cycles, set a longer break of 15 or 20 minutes. That's the whole technique. The Pomodoro framework adds the labelling and the cycle-counting, neither of which changes the timer itself.

If you'd rather the timer didn't make a sound, mute the tab. The visual "Time up" indicator still appears and the tab title still updates.

Kitchen timing without missing a step

Cooking is the canonical timer use case. A recipe with several stages, the rice for 18 minutes, the vegetables for 4, the sauce reduces for another 6, is hard to keep in your head and trivial with a timer. Open this page in a separate tab for each stage, label the tabs by changing the duration before starting, and the tab title shows you which timer is closest to firing.

For very short countdowns where seconds matter, like blanching greens or boiling an egg to a specific firmness, the timer's seconds field is the one to set.

Privacy and what the page sends

The timer's working state (the duration you set, the laps you record) stays in memory and never leaves your device — none of it is uploaded or stored. Aggregate page analytics and any advertising shown are handled by Google's services as described on the privacy page. Closing the tab clears the timer state.