Online Timer — countdown timer with alarm

How to use Online Timer

Pick a preset or enter your own minutes, seconds or hours. Press Start. The countdown runs even if you switch to another tab. At zero the sound plays until you stop it — no politely giving up after one beep.

Pause and reset are one click each, so restarting the same interval — a second round of the game, a second batch of eggs — takes no retyping.

A timer for 10 minutes, and for every other number

Ten minutes is the workhorse interval: a break between tasks, a quick tidy-up, the last stretch before leaving the house. But the presets cover the whole family. A timer for 5 minutes handles tea and short stretches. A timer for twenty minutes fits a focused work sprint or a power nap. A timer for 1 minute is the honest way to do planks.

Longer stretches work the same way: set a timer for thirty minutes for the oven, or three hours for the slow cooker — the countdown does not care how big the number is, only that you pressed Start. Nothing makes five minutes feel shorter than being the one who set the 5 minutes timer, and nothing makes it feel longer than being the one waiting for it.

Where set intervals earn their keep

Kitchen: the classic rule for eggs — about six minutes in boiling water for a soft yolk, ten to twelve for hard-boiled — is exactly what a countdown was born for. Classroom: project the tab on the board and a timer on for 15 minutes turns "finish soon" into a number every pupil can see.

Meetings: share the tab in a Teams call and agenda points suddenly end on time. Workouts: one minute on, one off — the stopwatch counts up, the countdown counts down, and honesty lives in between.

Why a browser timer instead of your phone

A timer in a browser tab has one advantage over the one on your phone: it's already where you are. If you're working at a computer, the countdown sits in a tab you can glance at, and starting it doesn't mean picking up the device that will show you three notifications on the way. The phone timer wins when you're moving around the kitchen. The browser timer wins when you're sitting still and working.

A timer doesn't make you faster. It makes you honest about how long things actually take — which is usually the part you were avoiding.

Timer, stopwatch, or alarm clock?

These three tools answer different questions, and picking the wrong one is a common small frustration. A timer counts down from a duration you choose and rings at zero — use it when you know how long something should take. A stopwatch counts up from zero — use it when you want to find out how long something took. An alarm clock goes off at a specific clock time, like 7:30, rather than after an elapsed interval — use it when the moment matters more than the duration.