Appointments at the surgery or the dentist are rarely worth arriving late for, and the useful figure is not the appointment itself but how long is left before you have to set off. Set that in your head as 10:38 am and this page will count down to it, exact to the second, for as long as it stays open.
Because the count reads straight from your device's clock, its accuracy rests on that clock being right, time zone included. Phones and computers normally handle this themselves, so in practice the figure here lines up with whatever time the device is already showing elsewhere on screen.
Rail and bus timetables across Britain are printed in 24-hour time, which is why 10:38 is the version that matters when checking a departure against a board or a printed sheet. This page shows 10:38 am for everyday reading and 10:38 alongside it, so the two can be matched without any mental arithmetic.
Common questions
Does the number update by itself?
Yes. It recalculates every second from your device's clock, so there is nothing to refresh or restart. Whatever is on screen is the current gap to the target time, not a figure worked out when the page first loaded.
What happens if 10:38 am has already gone for today?
The count simply carries on towards the next occurrence, which is tomorrow. That rollover happens on its own — the page does not need reloading and there is nothing to reset by hand.
Which clock does it use?
Your own. It reads the local time and time zone from the device you are looking at, so the figure reflects where you actually are rather than a fixed zone written into the page.
Will this alert me when the time arrives?
No. It is a live number rather than an alarm — nothing rings, buzzes or notifies you at zero. If you need to be interrupted at 10:38 am, set an alarm as well and treat this page as the running total.