A browser timer: what happens when you close the tab?
A browser timer stops when you close the tab. Know that and you can use it, and in exchange you never install anything.
The reason it's worth having: pick up your phone to time three minutes and you end up reading a notification, and by the time you look back the noodles are ruined. This is about timing those three minutes on the screen already in front of you.
The tab has to stay open
The one thing that matters. A browser does not keep counting for a tab you closed.
Switching to another tab is fine. Time passes in a background tab and the alert still arrives, though browsers slow background tabs down, so the seconds display may freeze briefly and the alert can be a few seconds late. For three-minute noodles that's nothing. For anything where seconds matter, this is the wrong tool.
If the computer sleeps, the timer falls behind by however long it slept. If you're leaving your desk, use your phone's alarm.
When there's no sound
Browsers block a page from making noise until you have interacted with it: a rule that exists because of ads that started shouting on their own.
So a timer set the instant a page loads may be silent. If you pressed the start button, that counts as interaction and it normally sorts itself out.
Other things to check: whether the tab itself is muted (the speaker mark near the address bar), the operating system volume, and, on a work computer, whether browser notifications are switched off by policy.
Why 25 minutes?
The best-known focus method is 25 minutes of work and 5 minutes of rest. It's named after the tomato-shaped kitchen timer its inventor used.
There's no magic in the number. What does the work is having a fixed end. "Until it is done" is heavy to start; "just 25 minutes" is light. In practice everyone has their own length: some people want 40 minutes, some 15.
Only one rule matters: when it rings, actually stop. Keep saying "just a bit more" and the timer has stopped doing anything for you.
Cooking is a bit different
In a kitchen you can't watch the screen, so the sound is everything.
- For things that boil over, set it slightly short. Better to go and look
- For anything that has to be exact, like an oven, set the oven's own timer as well
- Timing several things at once, start with the one that finishes last
What this does not cover
- Alarms at a fixed clock time: "every morning at 8" is not something a browser can do. That is
your phone's job
- A stopwatch counting up
- A timer running across several devices
The timer does what a browser can do, and it admits the rest on its own face: close the tab and it won't ring. Which you weren't about to do anyway. Buttons cover 1, 3, 5, 10 and 30 minutes, or put in your own number.
Anything with a date attached belongs in the schedule box rather than here. Written down there it dots the day on the calendar, then rings with the same sound at the hour you set.