A timer counts down a length of time you choose; it neither knows nor cares what the clock says when you start it. That distinction is the whole of the difference between this section and the alarm pages, and it is why the 444 duration pages here are named after amounts rather than moments — three minutes, twenty-five minutes, an hour and a half.
Cooking is where most of them get used, and British cooking supplies plenty of short, fussy intervals worth getting right. Tea wants three to five minutes in the pot depending on how you take it. A soft-boiled egg is a matter of seconds, not minutes, if you care about the yolk. A roast needs its resting time protected from everyone hovering by the oven, and a Yorkshire pudding punishes an early oven door more reliably than any recipe warns.
Beyond the kitchen
- Revision blocks and past papers timed to the length of the real exam
- Twenty-five minute focus sessions, the classic Pomodoro pattern
- Interval training, rest between sets and circuit rounds
- Rehearsing a talk against a strict slot before you have to give it
- Board games and quizzes where somebody has to keep everyone honest
The same browser rule applies as everywhere else on the site: the countdown runs in the tab, and the tab has to stay open for the alert to sound. On a laptop propped up on the worktop, or a second tab beside the one you are working in, that is rarely a hardship. On a phone that locks itself after thirty seconds it is a real limitation, and worth knowing before you rely on it.
If you already know the length you want, going straight to it saves fiddling. Durations run from a single second up to several hours, so the awkward ones — seven minutes, forty minutes, ninety minutes — each have a page rather than being approximated with something close enough.
Common questions
How is this different from the alarm clock?
The timer counts down a length of time — twelve minutes, say — starting from whenever you press go. The alarm fires at a named moment on the clock, such as 6:30 am. Use whichever matches how you are thinking about it.
Does the countdown keep running if I look at another tab?
Usually yes, though some browsers slow down background pages, which can make the display catch up in jumps. The tab has to stay open either way; closing it ends the countdown.
Is there a timer for an unusual length like seven minutes?
Yes. The duration pages cover every minute up to four hours and every second up to three minutes, so awkward lengths have their own page rather than being rounded to something near.
What happens when it reaches zero?
An alert tone plays through your device's speakers and keeps going until you come back to the tab and stop it, so you do not have to sit watching the numbers.
Can I use it as a kitchen timer with wet hands?
That is one of the more common uses. A laptop or tablet propped on the worktop takes a single click to start, and there is nothing to unlock first.
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