Once younger children are finally asleep, this is often the only quiet stretch of the day anyone gets, and it disappears faster than expected. If 10:40 pm is when it has to end, a live countdown gives that stretch an edge rather than letting it drift towards a much later night.
The figure on this page comes from your own device's clock, checked continuously and recalculated every second against 10:40 pm. There is nothing to press and nothing to set up first — the count is already running by the time the page has finished loading, and it keeps going while you are looking at it.
Twelve o'clock is where the 12-hour clock is at its weakest, since 12 am and 12 pm are read the wrong way round often enough to cause real trouble. Writing a time as 22:40 removes the problem outright, because a 24-hour figure only ever points at one moment in the day.
Common questions
Is it affected by the clocks changing?
Only in the sense that your device is. When the change between GMT and BST happens at the end of March and October, the device adjusts and the countdown follows it without anything to do here.
What is 22:40 in the 12-hour clock?
That is 10:40 pm, or twenty to eleven at night if you are saying it aloud. From 13:00 onwards, subtracting twelve gives the pm figure — the same moment written three different ways.
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 10:40 pm 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.
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