1 Minute Timer
One minute, counted down with an alert at the end.
Ready when you are
About the 1 minute timer
A minute is the length people reach for when they want a hard stop rather than a measurement. Planks and wall sits. A round of a game. Brushing in quadrants. Rinsing a mouthwash for the time the bottle actually says instead of the time it feels like. In every one of those the point is not knowing how long has passed, it is being told when to stop, which is why this page starts on a minute and gets out of the way.
Press start and the ring empties once around. When it reaches the end the alert sounds three rising notes, loud enough to hear from the other side of a kitchen but not so long that you have to go and silence it. If you would rather it stayed silent, the speaker button turns the sound off and the ring alone tells you.
The timer keeps correct time in a background tab. That sounds obvious and it is not: a great many browser timers are driven by the animation frame callback, which browsers stop calling the moment a tab is hidden, so the countdown freezes and the alert never fires. This one is driven from a wall clock deadline, so switching to another tab, or another window, changes nothing about when it goes off.
One minute is also the length that shows up most in cooking instructions that assume you are standing there. Resting a steak per centimetre of thickness, blanching, letting a sauce catch. If you want a different length, the row of presets covers the common ones and the box below takes anything you type, including 90s, 1:30 and 2m.
A minute is also the unit that speech is measured in. Most people read aloud at 130 to 150 words a minute and speak off the cuff a little slower, so a one minute slot is roughly a page of double spaced text, and a one minute answer is three or four sentences rather than the eight you were planning. Timing yourself once is usually enough to recalibrate permanently, and it is the cheapest presentation practice there is.
Be warned that a watched minute is a long minute. Paying attention to the passage of time makes it feel longer, which is why the last thirty seconds of a plank are worse than the first thirty and why a minute of silence in a meeting is unbearable. If you are timing something unpleasant, start the timer and then look away from it. The countdown will be exactly as long either way, but it will not feel it.
A minute is also the unit that speech is measured in. Most people read aloud at 130 to 150 words a minute and speak off the cuff a little slower, so a one minute slot is roughly a page of double spaced text, and a one minute answer is three or four sentences rather than the eight you were planning. Timing yourself once is usually enough to recalibrate permanently, and it is the cheapest presentation practice there is.
Be warned that a watched minute is a long minute. Paying attention to the passage of time makes it feel longer, which is why the last thirty seconds of a plank are worse than the first thirty and why a minute of silence in a meeting is unbearable. If you are timing something unpleasant, start the timer and then look away from it. The countdown will be exactly as long either way, but it will not feel it.
Other lengths
Frequently Asked Questions
Does the 1 minute timer keep running if I switch tabs?
Is there a sound when the time is up?
Do I need to install anything or sign up?
Can I set a different length?
All the tools
- Stopwatch Count up with laps, splits and hundredths. Copy the whole table when you are done.
- Pomodoro Focus sessions with breaks in between, your own lengths, and a count of the rounds.
- Countdown Count down to a date or an event. The link carries the date, so you can share the same countdown.
- Interval timer Rounds of work and rest, with the last three seconds of each one counted aloud.
- Alarm clock An alarm for a time of day. It survives a reload and rings until you stop it.