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Online Timer

Set hours, minutes and seconds — or tap a preset — and the countdown starts. Three beeps sound when it reaches zero, the remaining time shows in the browser tab so you can work in another window, and you can pause and resume without losing your place. Everything runs in the page; nothing is uploaded and no permission is needed.

5:00 5 Minutes 0 Seconds

The countdown works from a target time, so it stays accurate in a background tab. The alarm is generated in the page — there is no audio file and nothing is uploaded.

How it works

The timer stores the moment it should finish and compares it against the clock a few times a second, rather than subtracting one second per tick. This matters more than it sounds: browsers deliberately slow down timers in background tabs to save battery, so a tick-based countdown drifts by minutes over a long run while an end-time comparison stays exact no matter how irregular the ticks are.

The alarm is generated with the Web Audio API — three short sine beeps — so there is no sound file to download and no autoplay prompt, because audio only ever starts after you press start. Mute it and the timer still finishes silently with the display turning green. Tab-title updates let you keep an eye on the countdown while the page sits in the background.

Pause banks the remaining time and resume continues from it. Reset clears everything back to the duration in the fields. Minutes and seconds accept values above 59, so entering 90 minutes works exactly as you would expect, and the whole range goes up to 99 hours.

Practical examples

Cooking pasta

Tap the 10-minute preset, switch to your recipe in another tab, and the countdown stays visible in the tab title until the beeps.

A 90-minute study block

Enter 90 in the minutes field rather than 1 hour 30, since minutes above 59 are allowed. Pause for a coffee and resume with the remaining time intact.

Interval training

Set 45 seconds, start, and reset after each round — the fields keep your duration, so restarting is one press. For lap-by-lap timing use the stopwatch instead.

A quiet reminder

Mute the alarm and set 25 minutes. The display turns green at zero, which is enough of a signal in a shared office.

Frequently asked questions

Does the timer keep running if I switch tabs?

Yes. It works from a target time rather than counting ticks, so background throttling cannot make it lose time. The tab title keeps showing the remaining minutes and seconds.

Will the alarm sound if the tab is in the background?

In most browsers yes, because audio was already unlocked when you pressed start. Some mobile browsers suspend audio in background tabs; if that matters, keep the tab visible.

Why is there no sound before I press start?

Browsers block audio until a user action, and rightly so. Pressing start is that action, which is why the alarm needs no permission dialog and no test button.

Can I enter more than 59 minutes or seconds?

Yes. Minutes and seconds are not clamped to 59, so 90 minutes or 150 seconds are both fine. The total is capped at 99 hours.

What happens if I reload the page?

The timer resets. It deliberately stores nothing, so a shared or public computer keeps no trace of what you were timing.

Is this the same as a stopwatch?

No — a timer counts down from a duration you set, a stopwatch counts up from zero and records laps. For measuring how long something took, use the stopwatch.

Can I set an alarm for a specific time of day?

Not directly; this counts a duration. For a specific date and time, the countdown-to-date tool shows the days, hours and minutes remaining until then.

Does pausing lose any time?

No. Pause banks exactly the seconds that were left and resume continues from there, so a paused-and-resumed timer runs for the full duration.

Why does the display show one second when there is only a fraction left?

Remaining time is rounded up on purpose, so a running timer never shows 0. Zero appears at the moment the alarm fires and not a moment before.

Can I run several timers at once?

One per page, but you can open the tool in several tabs — each keeps its own countdown, and each shows its remaining time in its own tab title.

Does it work offline?

Once the page has loaded, yes. The timer and the alarm are entirely local, with no network calls after the initial load.

Is anything about my timer sent anywhere?

No. There is no account, no sync and no upload — the countdown exists only in this page.

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