Timers
1 Minute Timer
A one-minute countdown with a clear alarm at zero — built for a single measured minute, from a board game turn to timing how long you can hold something.
Countdown timer
Alarm and notifications
A short tone plays automatically when the timer ends, synthesised in your browser — nothing is downloaded or streamed.
Works even if you switch tabs
This timer tracks the clock time it should finish at, not a count of ticks, so switching tabs or locking your device never makes it run late. The tab title above shows the time left even while you’re looking at something else.
A one-minute timer for board and party games
Sixty seconds is the length most party and strategy games actually build their turn limits around, from a clue-giving round in a word game to a single move in a heavier strategy title where players are prone to overthinking. Set this timer once per round rather than restarting a mental count in your head, and everyone at the table hears the same alarm at the same instant — nobody's turn quietly runs 15 seconds long because they were the only one glancing at a clock. Because the countdown is driven by a fixed target time rather than a tally of elapsed ticks, it stays accurate even if the phone running it gets picked up, turned around to show the table, or set face-down between turns.
Timing a plank hold to the second
A one-minute plank is a common early goal for people building core strength, and the value of timing it precisely rather than counting in your head is that counting drifts under strain — the last ten seconds of a hard hold always feel longer than the first ten, and a mental count tends to slow down exactly when fatigue sets in. Start the timer, get into position, and let the alarm end the hold rather than a guess. If you're building up toward a full minute rather than already there, the same countdown works for a shorter custom length; drop into the hours/minutes/seconds entry and dial in 30 or 45 seconds instead of using the one-minute preset.
Rehearsing a one-minute pitch or speech
An elevator pitch, a lightning-talk introduction, or a one-minute icebreaker at the start of a meeting all live inside the same tight window, and the only reliable way to know if a script actually fits is to say it out loud against a real countdown rather than reading it silently and guessing. Run it two or three times back to back against the same fixed minute: the parts where you consistently get cut off are the parts to cut, and the parts you finish with ten seconds to spare are where you have room to add a detail. A minute is short enough that a script which feels tight on paper often runs long once you're actually speaking it, since spoken pacing is almost always slower than silent reading.
Toothbrushing and other fixed one-minute habits
Dentists commonly recommend brushing each half of your mouth for a full minute, and a countdown removes the guesswork of humming a song in your head or watching a bathroom clock with no second hand. Set it, brush until the alarm, switch sides, and set it again — two runs covers the routine most guidance describes. The same pattern extends to any other habit built around a fixed one-minute unit: a cooldown stretch, a single set of a quick exercise, or timing how long a single task takes when you suspect it's shorter than it feels. Because the alarm is synthesised in the browser rather than streamed from anywhere, it still fires with the phone in airplane mode or with no signal in the room.
When one minute isn't quite the length you need
The one-minute preset is a single tap, but it's tied to exactly 60 seconds — if what you actually need is 45 seconds for a faster-paced game or 90 seconds for a slightly longer pitch, the hours/minutes/seconds fields next to the presets accept any length down to a single second. Nothing about switching to a custom length changes how the alarm or the background-tab behaviour works; the one-tap presets exist purely to save you typing in the common cases, not to limit what the countdown can time.
Questions
- How long should a board game turn timer actually be?
- Sixty seconds is the standard length used by most turn-timer apps and physical sand timers sold for games like Codenames or Taboo, and it works because it is long enough to make one real decision but short enough that a player who is stuck has to commit rather than keep deliberating. If your group finds a full minute too generous for a filler game with small decisions, drop to the countdown's custom entry and try 30 or 40 seconds instead — the one-tap preset here is a starting point, not a rule printed on a box. What matters more than the exact number is that everyone hears the same alarm at the same moment, so no one player quietly gets an extra ten seconds because they were the only one watching a phone.
- Is a one-minute plank actually a good goal?
- A one-minute hold is a common milestone people work toward when starting a plank routine, precisely because it's long enough that form usually starts to break down before it — hips sagging, shoulders creeping toward the ears — which makes it a useful checkpoint for noticing technique problems rather than just a number to beat. Because this timer keeps counting the true elapsed time in the background even if you glance away or the screen locks, you get an honest minute rather than one that quietly runs short because a phone's screen timed out and paused something that was watching taps instead of the clock. If sixty seconds is currently unreachable with good form, holding for a shorter custom duration and building up is the more useful path than gutting through a full minute badly.
- Why does a one-minute elevator pitch need a hard stop?
- Sixty seconds is the rough length people mean when they say 'elevator pitch' — short enough to say in the time it takes to ride a few floors, which is the whole origin of the term — and rehearsing against a real countdown rather than an estimate is what actually reveals whether your pitch fits. Most people speaking at a natural, unhurried pace fit somewhere around 130 to 150 words into a minute, so if you're consistently getting cut off by the alarm mid-sentence, the fix is almost always trimming the script rather than talking faster, since a rushed pitch tends to undercut the confidence it's supposed to project. Running it against the same fixed minute a few times in a row is also the fastest way to notice which part you ramble on.