Screen Soft Light / Timekeeping / 15 MINUTE TIMER

15:00

Space starts or pauses, R resets, F goes fullscreen.

No. 001 · 15 MINUTE TIMER

15 minute timer — a fifteen-minute countdown with alarm

  • 01 A quarter hour, one click
  • 02 Screen stays awake
  • 03 Alarm at zero

A fifteen-minute countdown with large digits and an alarm at zero. A quarter of an hour is a natural unit for study sprints, longer breaks, cleaning blitzes and agenda items in meetings.

Other timers —
1 min2 min3 min5 min10 min20 min30 min1 hourClassroomCustomAlarm clockSunrise alarmOK-to-wake
§ 01

Study sprints

Fifteen minutes is a manageable study block for younger students and for subjects that are hard to stay focused on. Run one sprint, take a short break with the five-minute timer, and repeat.

§ 02

A fixed fifteen minutes turns an open-ended chore into a game against the clock.

Cleaning and household blitzes

A fixed fifteen minutes turns an open-ended chore into a game against the clock. Many people find they get more done in a timed quarter hour than in an untimed hour.

§ 03

Meetings and agenda items

Give each agenda item its own fifteen minutes and put the countdown on the shared screen. Everyone can see when it is time to wrap up, which keeps the meeting on schedule without anyone having to interrupt.

Procedure

Three moves to peak output

  1. 01

    Press Start

    The timer is set to 15:00. Press Start or the space bar.

  2. 02

    Keep it visible

    Go fullscreen on a spare screen so the time left is always in view.

  3. 03

    Chain sessions

    Press Restart when the alarm sounds to run another fifteen minutes.

Inquiries

Questions worth asking

Q.01 Can I hear the alarm from another room?
With the device volume up and the Alarm sound option on, the three sets of beeps are loud enough to carry. Leave the tab open — closing it stops the timer.
Q.02 Why does the screen change color?
The timer is a light as well as a clock. It starts as cool 6500K daylight and warms through the color temperatures of a sunset — 4000K, 3000K, 2200K — to an ember red at zero, so you can tell roughly how much time is left from across a room without reading the digits. Turn off Color light for a plain dark timer.
Q.03 Does the timer keep running if I switch tabs?
Yes. The countdown is calculated from the clock rather than counted tick by tick, so it finishes on time even when the browser slows down a background tab. The alarm plays when it ends, as long as the tab is still open and the sound toggle is on.
Q.04 Will my screen turn off while the timer runs?
On browsers that support the Screen Wake Lock API (Chrome, Edge and recent Safari), the timer asks the device to keep the screen on while it runs, and releases that request when you pause or the countdown ends.
Cross-reference

Try adjacent plates