The Surprisingly Simple Countdown Timer

Need a countdown timer for a specific duration of time? Maybe you want to boil your eggs for exactly 4 minutes, do squats for 45 seconds or meditate for 20 minutes. You need a way to count the time remaining until the activity is over. This timer is extremely simple, but for certain cases it may be all you need.

Simply choose an amount of time, then start the countdown. Click the fullscreen button and your simple, distraction-free countdown timer will fill the screen. As you would expect, you can pause, reset or cancel the timer at any time. No advertising, no nonsense!

The timer is meant to stay simple, but it has a few extras for when you need them:

• Play a sound when the time is up. Choose a short beep, a long chime or a gentle bell, and preview it before you start.
• Share the timer live. Once it is running, copy the share link and send it to other people. Everyone who opens the link sees the same countdown, and it stays in sync when you pause, resume or reset it. Keep your own page open while others are watching.
• Count up instead of down, and give your timer a title.

If there is something else you would like the timer to do, I'd love to hear your suggestions.

I know, I know, there are a lot of other countdown timers already available, so why am I building another one? For years my website has focussed on what I call "countdown clocks", devices that count down to a specific date. I found that increasingly, people were discovering my website when they were actually looking for a way to count down a specific time duration, rather than to a specific date.

Counting down to a date vs an amount of time are quite different requirements, but there's a lot of confusion as to what to call each thing. Hence, when people search online for these sort of tools, it's not always clear which they are looking for. For now I am using the term "clock" for counting down to a date, and "timer" for counting down an amount of time. I decided to begin offering both tools on my website, so that regardless of which type of countdown people needed, they could find what they wanted.