How many timers can I run at once?

As many as you like. Each one keeps its own name and length, and they all count down together.

What happens when a timer finishes?

It sounds an alarm, the card turns red, and it starts counting up so you can see how long ago it went off — useful when you were out of the room and want to know whether the eggs are a minute over or five.

Do the timers keep running if I switch tabs or close the browser?

Each timer stores the moment it will finish rather than a counter, so switching tabs makes no difference at all. If you close the tab entirely the alarm cannot sound, but when you come back the timer shows correctly as finished, with how long ago that was.

Will the alarm sound if I am in another app?

If the tab is still open, yes. Alarms are scheduled on the browser's audio clock, which is not throttled the way JavaScript timers are in background tabs. Your device must not be muted, and you need to have pressed something on the page first, because browsers only allow sound after a deliberate action.

What can I type in the length box?

A bare number is seconds, so 90 means ninety seconds. It also takes 20 min, 1:30, 1h 15min and 2m30s. If it cannot read what you typed it tells you instead of guessing.

Yes, on this device, so a reload or an accidental close does not lose them. Nothing is sent anywhere and there is no account.

Multi Timer

Several named countdowns at once, which is the thing a single timer cannot do. Put the potatoes, the beans and the roast on separate clocks and see all three at a glance. When one finishes it keeps counting, so you can tell whether it went off ten seconds ago or ten minutes ago.

Add a timer

Name

Length

No timers yet. Add one above, or pick a common one.

Sound Vibrate Keep screen on

Lengths it understands

The length box takes whatever is natural to type: 20 for twenty seconds, 20 min, 1:30 for a minute and a half, 1h 15min, or 2m30s. If it cannot read what you typed it says so rather than guessing at a number.

Why it stays right in the background

Each timer holds the moment it will finish, not a number being counted down. Browsers throttle background tabs to roughly one timer callback a minute, so anything that decrements a counter loses time and finishes late. Working from the finish time instead means the reading is correct the moment you look at it, however long the tab was asleep.

The alarms are scheduled on the browser's audio clock as soon as a timer starts, which is not throttled either, so a timer that ends while you are in another app still sounds when it should.

When several timers beat one

The case for running countdowns side by side is that the alternative is remembering. A kitchen with three things in the oven, a lab bench with staggered incubations, a workshop with two glue joints curing — in each of them the cost of a missed interval is real and the mental effort of tracking three end-times at once is the thing that fails first, usually because something else interrupted you.

Naming them is what makes the difference between a useful board and three anonymous clocks. When one goes off, the label is the whole message: you want to be told what has finished, not that a timer has.

Two things worth knowing before you rely on it

The first is sound. Browsers will not play audio until a page has had some interaction from you, which is a deliberate protection against pages that make noise on their own. Starting a timer counts, so in ordinary use this never comes up — but if you have loaded the page and not touched it, the first alert may be silent. Starting and stopping any timer once is enough to settle it.

The second is that this is a page, not an application installed on your device. Timers survive the tab being in the background and the screen being idle, because they are measured against the clock rather than counted in ticks. They do not survive the tab being closed, the browser being quit, or the device restarting, and nothing is stored anywhere to bring them back. For anything where a missed interval actually matters, treat it as you would a kitchen timer: useful, and not the only thing standing between you and a burnt dinner.