Countdown Timer
New Year
The countdown is stored in the address, so the link you copy reopens this exact timer. Times are read in your own time zone.
A deadline you can watch and share
A countdown does something a date in a calendar does not: it makes the remaining time visible and continuous. This timer counts down to any date and time in days, hours, minutes and seconds, updating every second, and it keeps the target in the address bar so the link you copy reopens the same countdown for whoever you send it to.
It suits product launches and releases, exam and application deadlines, weddings and holidays, contract expiries, and the ordinary case of wanting to know how long is left until something without doing the arithmetic in your head.
How the remaining time is worked out
The target date and time is converted to a timestamp, the current time is read every second, and the difference in milliseconds is broken into whole units: days are the total seconds divided by 86,400, hours the remainder divided by 3,600, minutes the remainder of that divided by 60, and seconds what is left.
A span of 90,061,000 milliseconds is therefore shown as 1 day, 1 hour, 1 minute and 1 second — 86,400 + 3,600 + 60 + 1 seconds. Once the target passes, the remaining time clamps to zero and the timer reports that the moment has arrived rather than counting upward into negative numbers.
The shareable link
The target and the label live in the query string, so the page URL is the countdown. Changing either updates the address without adding an entry to your browser history, and the "copy shareable link" button copies whatever is currently in the bar.
That has one consequence worth understanding: the time is interpreted in the reader’s own time zone, not yours. A countdown you set for 09:00 will read as 09:00 wherever it is opened, which is correct for something like "New Year" and wrong for something like a webinar that starts at a fixed global instant. For a fixed instant, pick a moment and tell people which zone it is in — or use the date and time converter on this site to work out the local equivalent.
Accuracy and limits
The display refreshes once a second from your device’s clock, so it is exactly as accurate as that clock is. Most operating systems keep time synchronised to within a fraction of a second, but a device with a badly set clock will show a badly set countdown.
Browsers throttle background tabs, so a countdown left in an inactive tab may update less often than once a second. It is not drifting — the remaining time is recalculated from the target each tick rather than decremented — so it corrects itself the moment the tab is visible again. There is no alarm, notification or sound when the target is reached; the timer only reports the state of the page you are looking at.
Countdown questions
Does the countdown keep running if I close the page?
There is nothing to keep running — the timer computes the gap between now and the target each time it ticks, so reopening the link shows the correct remaining time however long the page was closed.
Which time zone does the target use?
The reader’s local zone. The date and time you enter are read as local wall-clock time, so a link opened in another country shows the same wall-clock target, not the same instant. Mention the zone explicitly if the exact moment matters.
Can I count down to something years away?
Yes. The days figure is not capped, so a target several years out simply shows a large number of days. The seconds still tick, which is either satisfying or alarming depending on the deadline.