Online Timer — countdown timer with alarm

How to use the timer

Enter the duration you want in hours, minutes, or seconds. Press start. The countdown begins immediately. Leave the tab open, or switch to another one — the count keeps going. Pause if you need to step away, then resume from the same point.

When it hits zero, the timer rings. Restart the same duration with one press, or set a new one.

Common durations and what each is good for

Most people reach for the same handful of lengths. Each one below has its own page that opens preset and ready to start. 1 minute — brushing teeth, steeping green tea, a plank, holding a stretch. The most-used short interval, and short enough that you'll watch it the whole way down.

5 minutes — soft-boiled eggs, a rest between sets, a breathing exercise, letting a French press stand. A timer for 5 minutes is also the standard "five more minutes" that otherwise becomes twenty. 10 minutes — the single most searched length. Good for pasta, a short meditation, a tidy-up sprint, or capping a meeting agenda item.

15 minutes — a nap that leaves you sharp instead of groggy, a warm-up, an oven check, a focused burst on one small task. 20 minutes — roasting vegetables, a study block, a face mask, letting dough rest. A 20 minutes timer is long enough to do real work and short enough that you won't drift.

30 minutes — a workout, a load of laundry, a phone call you want to keep bounded, a slow bake. 1 hour — parking, a long simmer, a work block, or a reminder to stand up and move.

Every duration has its own page

You don't have to type a number if you don't want to. Every duration on this site has a dedicated page that arrives already set, so a bookmark or a search takes you straight to a running timer. Browse them by unit: timers in seconds for short intervals, timers in minutes for everyday cooking and focus blocks, and timers in hours for longer stretches. If you use the same length often — a timer for 10 minutes for tea, say, or a timer for 1 minute for a drill — bookmark that page and skip the setup entirely.

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.