READY
READY
An hour is the longest block most people can hold without the timer becoming background noise, and the one where an honest countdown matters most. Sixty minutes is a slow roast, an exam section, a lesson, a parking meter, a session with a client, and the amount of screen time a lot of households negotiate over.
It is also long enough that the clock will be wrong if the timer is built badly: an hour in a background tab is where counter-based timers quietly lose whole minutes. This one records the moment it should end and works backwards from the real clock, so an hour is an hour whether the tab was in front of you or not.
The tip: an hour deserves a stopping condition as well as a start. Decide now what you will do when it rings (stand up, save, leave the room) and the ring becomes a boundary instead of a suggestion you talk yourself out of.
Press start or hit the space bar. The tab title counts down with it, so the time left is readable without switching windows.
Yes, to the second. Browsers slow down background timers, so this one does not count ticks at all; it stores the end time and compares it to the clock whenever it draws.
Add ?t=1h&autostart=1 to the address and send it. Whoever opens the link gets an hour that starts when they arrive.
A short chiptune arpeggio plays and the display switches to the finished state. If you have switched desktop notifications on and the tab is in the background, you get one of those too.