25 Minute Timer

The timer on this page is set to 25 minutes before you touch anything, so there is no dial to turn and no number to type. Start it with the button or with the Space key and it counts down to zero; when the time is up it plays a short sound, and if you have allowed notifications it shows one as well, which helps when the tab is in the background.

What the page keeps is the moment the timer will end, not a running tally of seconds. That is why a reload, a switched tab or a laptop lid closed for a minute does not make it run long: when the page looks again, it works the time left out from the end moment and your device clock. Pause holds the remaining time exactly. +1 min adds a minute without stopping the count, Restart runs the full 25 minutes again from the top, and Reset puts the timer back to 25 minutes without starting it.

A fixed length is what people reach for when a task has a natural size: a round of an exercise, a short break, a step in a recipe, a turn in a game, a slot in a presentation, a timed practice question or a block of focused work. Having the length in the address means the timer can be bookmarked, sent to someone else, or put on a classroom screen and started with a single press, which is the reason for a page per duration.

If 25 minutes turns out to be the wrong length, nothing is lost. The main timer page takes any length in hours, minutes and seconds and keeps that length in its own link, and the pages for the other common lengths are listed right under the timer, shortest first, so the nearest fit is one click away.

The default end sounds are synthesised in the browser, so there is nothing to download, and you can pick a different sound, test it before you start, or choose none at all; a finished timer also flashes the tab title, so a silent timer still shows that it has ended. Browsers only let a page play sound after you have tapped or clicked it once, so starting the timer with a click or a key press is also what unlocks the sound for the rest of the run.

When you press Start, the sound is booked on the browser’s audio clock for the moment the timer ends, so a tab in the background can still sound on time. Phones and background tabs can pause a page’s audio to save power, though, so a sound can arrive late, or not at all, when the screen is off. If you need to be certain, turn on notifications, which your browser asks your permission for, or keep the page in front. Fullscreen, from its button or the F key, leaves only the time, its progress and the controls on screen, which makes the time left readable from across a room.