Countdown Timer
Live countdown to any date and time.
- Nothing is sent to a server
- Instant results
- Free, no sign-up
Related tools
All date & timeQuestions
Which timezone does the countdown use?
Your device's own. That makes it right for a personal deadline and unreliable for a shared one — a countdown to midnight hits four and a half hours apart in Vancouver and Halifax, and a whole calendar day apart from Auckland. For anything coordinated, agree a specific instant like '14:00 Toronto time' rather than a wall-clock time.
Why does the countdown stop moving when I switch tabs?
Browsers throttle timers in tabs that are not visible, usually to once a minute. The countdown does not lose track — it reads the clock afresh on every tick rather than counting down internally — so it snaps to the correct value the moment you come back. That is your operating system saving battery, not a fault.
Does it handle daylight saving correctly?
Yes. The remaining time is computed from actual elapsed milliseconds rather than wall-clock arithmetic, so a countdown spanning the March change is genuinely one hour shorter than the calendar suggests. That is the correct answer — the hour really did not exist.
What happens after the date passes?
It keeps counting, upward, showing how long ago the moment was. That makes it useful as a 'time since' counter — days sober, days since an incident, time since a launch — as well as a countdown.
Does it need an internet connection?
Only to load the page. After that everything comes from your device's clock, so the countdown keeps running with the network disconnected. Nothing about the date you enter is transmitted or stored.
About countdown timer
How the countdown works
The target is interpreted in your device’s own timezone, which is what makes it useful for a personal deadline and what makes it unreliable for a shared one. A countdown to “midnight” hits at a different moment for someone in Vancouver than for someone in Halifax — four and a half hours apart, and a whole calendar day apart from Auckland.
For anything coordinated across places, agree a specific instant — “14:00 Toronto time” — rather than a wall-clock time, and use the timezone planner to see when that lands for everyone.
Why a background tab stops ticking
Browsers throttle timers in tabs that are not visible, usually to once per minute and sometimes further. The countdown does not lose track — it reads the clock afresh on every tick rather than counting down internally — so it snaps to the correct value the moment you return. It simply will not animate while hidden, which is the operating system saving your battery rather than a bug.
Daylight saving
Countdowns spanning a daylight saving transition are computed from actual elapsed time, not from wall-clock arithmetic, so a countdown across the March change is one hour shorter in real time than the calendar suggests. That is correct: the hour genuinely did not exist.
Related
Count the days between two dates with days between dates, or plan across timezones with the meeting planner.