By this stage the kettle has usually been on once already and the radio is halfway through the morning news, which is precisely when nobody is watching the clock. A live count to 8:18 am does that watching for you, updating continuously so the number in front of you is always the current one.
The figure on this page comes from your own device's clock, checked continuously and recalculated every second against 8:18 am. 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.
Plenty of phones, laptops and dashboards default to a 24-hour display regardless of how people around here actually talk, so 08:18 may well be the figure staring back at you even though 8:18 am is how the same moment would be said aloud. Neither is more correct than the other.
Common questions
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 8:18 am, 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 08:18 in the 12-hour clock?
That is 8:18 am, or eighteen minutes past eight in the morning if you are saying it aloud. From 13:00 onwards, subtracting twelve gives the pm figure — the same moment written three different ways.
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