Stopwatch & countdown timer

Stopwatch and timer: alike but opposite

Although we use the two words as if they meant the same thing, they do opposite jobs. A stopwatch counts upwards from zero: you start it and it measures the time that passes, ideal when you don't know how long something will take. A timer does the reverse: you set a time and it counts down to zero, alerting you when it's done. One answers "how long did I take?" and the other "let me know in X minutes".

What we use them for

The timer is the king of the kitchen (the ten minutes for the pasta, the ones in the oven), of interval training and of the Pomodoro technique for studying or working in blocks with breaks. The stopwatch shines timing laps on a run, the length of a presentation or how long you take on a task you want to speed up. The lap or split function lets you record several times without stopping the count.

Why it works in the browser

There's no app to install: the tool uses your device's clock and shows the time on screen. It measures accurately by leaning on the system's real time, so it doesn't drift even if the tab has been open for a while. That said, if you leave the tab in the background for a long time, some browsers slow the updates to save battery; when you come back to it, the count snaps to the real time.

One useful detail

It's worth having the sound on if you use the timer for something where you won't be watching the screen, like cooking, since the audible alert is what tells you the time is up.