Date & Time Tools New Tool

Free Online Countdown Timer, Count to a Date or Set a Duration

Count down to a date or run a timer for a set length of time. Days, hours, minutes and seconds tick live, an alert sounds at zero, and the timer keeps correct time even when the tab sits in the background. Useful for launches, exams, deadlines and anything you need to watch.

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Free Online Countdown Timer, Count to a Date or Set a Duration

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🎯 Countdown Timer Count down to a date, or run a timer · stays right in a background tab

The countdown runs in your browser. Nothing you type is sent anywhere.

🎯 What are you counting down to?

Call it something

Date

Time

Try one of these

Ready when you are

—

Pick a date and time, then start the countdown.

Timers you have finished, kept in this browser only.

Nothing here yet Press Log to history on the Event countdown tab to keep an answer here. Load one back with the arrow button.

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Why This Timer Stays Right in a Background Tab

Most simple timers quietly lose minutes, and it is always the same reason.

The obvious way to write a countdown is to take a number of seconds and subtract one every second. It is also wrong. Browsers slow down timers in tabs you are not looking at, often to once a minute, and a phone that goes to sleep stops them altogether. A twenty five minute timer written that way comes back after twenty five real minutes with eleven minutes still on the clock. This one records the moment it should finish and works out the remaining time from the clock on every tick, so nothing is lost while you are somewhere else.

What happens	Counting down by one	Working from the finish time
You switch tabs for ten minutes	loses most of those minutes	correct to the second
The phone screen goes off	stops entirely	catches up when you look
The laptop sleeps	frozen at whatever it was	correct on waking
You reload the page	back to the start	also back to the start, since nothing is stored while it runs

The tone is made by the browser, not downloaded. There is no audio file, so nothing is fetched and nothing is tracked. Browsers only allow sound after you have pressed something, which is why it can only be armed by starting the timer.

This cannot wake you up. It is a web page, not an alarm clock. If the tab is closed, nothing runs, and a phone that has genuinely gone to sleep may not play a sound at all. For anything that matters, use the alarm on your phone.

How to Use the Countdown Timer

Four steps, and after the second one the form gets out of the way.

Pick the tab that matches your question Event countdown takes a date and a time. Duration timer takes a length. They are different questions and they get different tabs rather than one form pretending to do both.

Fill it in and press start The form disappears and the digits take its place, which is the point of a countdown. Change it brings the form back with everything still in it.

Use full screen if you want it across the room The button on the digits, or the one in the bar, hides the page around the tool and makes the numbers much larger. Escape brings you back.

Leave the tab if you need to The time left is worked out from the clock on every tick rather than counted down one second at a time, so switching away, locking the phone or letting the laptop sleep does not lose any of it.

What to Know Before You Start

Including the things this tool cannot do.

It does not lose time in a background tab. Browsers slow timers down in tabs you are not looking at, often to once a minute. This one records the moment it should finish and reads the clock on every tick, so it catches up the instant you come back.

It cannot wake you up. This is a web page, not an alarm clock. Close the tab and nothing runs. A phone that has properly gone to sleep may not play the tone at all. For anything that matters, use the alarm on your phone.

The tone is generated, not downloaded. There is no audio file, so nothing is fetched from anywhere. Browsers only allow sound after you have pressed something, which is why it can only be set up when you start the timer.

Reloading the page starts again. Nothing is written down while a countdown is running, deliberately, so a reload or a closed tab is a fresh start. Use Save setup to keep a target you come back to.

A countdown runs on your own clock. The event countdown uses the time zone your browser reports. If you need to know what a moment is in someone else time zone, the time zone converter on this site does that and this does not.

A duration timer stops at a week. Anything longer belongs in the event countdown, which counts in days and does not depend on the tab staying open for the whole time.

Key Features & Capabilities

What this tool does, and what it deliberately does not.

Two tools, two tabs A date countdown and a duration timer, kept separate instead of crammed into one form.

The form gets out of the way Press start and the digits take the whole panel, which is what you actually wanted to look at.

Full screen digits Numbers large enough to read across a room, with the page around them hidden.

Accurate in a background tab The time left comes from the clock on every tick, so nothing is lost while you are elsewhere.

A tone at the end Generated by the browser, three short beeps, and switched off with one tick box.

Nothing leaves the page No server, no account and no upload. Saved countdowns live in this browser and can be cleared from Settings.

About the Countdown Timer

Countdown timer means two different things, so this page has two tabs. One counts down to a moment on the calendar: a wedding, an exam, a launch, the new year. The other counts down a length of time: twenty five minutes of work, three minutes for tea, an hour for the oven. Squeezing both into a single form makes each of them worse, so they are kept apart, and each one hides itself the moment you press start, because a countdown is something you look at rather than something you fill in.

The part that actually matters is invisible. The obvious way to build a countdown is to hold a number of seconds and take one away every second. Browsers deliberately slow those timers down in tabs you are not looking at, often to once a minute, and a sleeping phone stops them completely. A timer built that way can be quarter of an hour out after a single meeting. This one stores the moment it is due to finish and works out what is left from the clock every quarter of a second, so it is correct whether you watched it the whole time or not.

What it cannot do is worth saying plainly. It is a web page and not an alarm clock. If the tab is closed nothing runs, if the device is genuinely asleep the tone may never play, and reloading starts it over because nothing is written down while it is running. For anything you must not miss, set the alarm on your phone. This is for the things where a large, readable set of digits on a screen in front of you is exactly what you needed.

Frequently Asked Questions

Everything worth knowing before you trust the answer.

Yes, and correctly. Most simple timers subtract a second at a time and lose minutes in a background tab, because browsers slow those timers down to save power. This one records the moment it is due to finish and works out the remaining time from the clock on every tick, so it is right when you come back regardless of what happened in between.

No. It is a web page, so it can only do anything while the tab is open. There is a short tone when a duration timer finishes and a visible change on the digits, but a closed tab does nothing and a sleeping phone may not play the sound. For anything important, use the alarm app on your phone.

Because that is what you asked for. A countdown exists to be looked at, and empty input boxes next to it are just clutter. Change it brings the form straight back with everything still filled in.

Yes, with the event countdown. It shows days, hours, minutes and seconds, and there is no upper limit on how far ahead the date can be. The duration timer stops at a week, because anything longer than that belongs in the event tab.

The countdown counts upwards instead, showing how long ago it was, and says so. That is useful more often than you would think, for anniversaries and for the awkward question of exactly how overdue something is.

The browser generates it. There is no audio file to download, so nothing is fetched from any server. Browsers require a user action before any sound can play, which is why the tone can only be prepared at the moment you press start rather than when the page loads.

The event countdown reads the time you type as your own local time, using the zone your browser reports. If you need to know what a moment looks like somewhere else, the time zone converter on this site is the tool for that.

No. Everything runs in your browser and there is no server behind it. Nothing is even written to your own browser while a countdown is running. Saved countdowns are stored locally and can be cleared from the Settings tab.