3 Minute Timer

About the 3 minute timer

Three minutes is the tea timer. Black tea wants three to five, green tea wants two to three, and the difference between three minutes and the four you guessed is the difference between a cup you finish and one you leave. It is also the soft boiled egg, the length of a boxing round in most amateur codes, and the standard for how long you should run a tap before drinking from a pipe that has stood overnight.

The page opens on three minutes. Press start, and the ring empties as the number falls. At zero it plays three rising notes, which you can turn off with the speaker button if the room needs quiet.

Because the countdown is anchored to a wall clock deadline rather than to a counter that ticks while you watch, you can switch tabs and come back. Whatever the browser did in the meantime, the reading is right when you return and the alert fires on time. That is the difference between a timer you can trust and one you have to babysit.

For tea specifically, start the timer when the water hits the leaves rather than when you fill the kettle. The extraction that matters is the steep, and the thirty seconds you spend carrying the cup are not part of it. If you want the leaves out at two and a half rather than three, type 2:30 into the box below the presets.

For eggs, three minutes assumes they went into water already at a rolling boil and came out of the fridge a moment before. A large egg wants closer to four minutes for a set white with a properly runny yolk, six to seven for jammy, and nine to ten for hard. Altitude works against you, because water boils cooler the higher you are, so the same three minutes on a mountain leaves the egg less cooked than it would at sea level.

Three minutes is also the round in amateur boxing and in most kickboxing codes, and it is roughly the length of a pop song, which is not entirely a coincidence: both settled on about the span an audience will give a single unbroken thing before attention starts to wander. That makes three minutes a useful unit for anything you want to do intensely and then stop.

For eggs, three minutes assumes they went into water already at a rolling boil and came out of the fridge a moment before. A large egg wants closer to four minutes for a set white with a properly runny yolk, six to seven for jammy, and nine to ten for hard. Altitude works against you, because water boils cooler the higher you are, so the same three minutes on a mountain leaves the egg less cooked than it would at sea level.

Three minutes is also the round in amateur boxing and in most kickboxing codes, and it is roughly the length of a pop song, which is not entirely a coincidence: both settled on about the span an audience will give a single unbroken thing before attention starts to wander. That makes three minutes a useful unit for anything you want to do intensely and then stop.

Other lengths

• 1 Minute Timer
• 5 Minute Timer
• 10 Minute Timer
• 15 Minute Timer
• 20 Minute Timer
• 30 Minute Timer
• 1 Hour Timer