An episode that ends around 10:56 pm tends to be followed by another one, which is roughly how a reasonable night becomes a short one. Seeing the exact time remaining, ticking down rather than sitting still, makes that decision a conscious one instead of something that just happens.
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.
Said out loud, 10:56 pm usually comes out as four minutes to eleven at night rather than as a string of digits. Spoken and written time diverge more than people expect, which is worth remembering when somebody tells you a time over the phone and you are trying to match it against something printed.
Common questions
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 10:56 pm, set an alarm as well and treat this page as the running total.
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 22:56 in the 12-hour clock?
That is 10:56 pm, or four minutes 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.