✦

Shared by link, no account

One timer.
Everybody watching it.

Create a countdown, send the link, and every person who opens it sees the same clock ending at the same second. No account, no room code, no install.

Free for any number of people. Or run a timer just for yourself.

✦ The problem

Two timers are not one timer.

A timer only settles an argument if everyone is looking at the same one. Two phones started ten seconds apart end ten seconds apart, and the difference always lands on whoever was speaking. A shared link removes the question: one countdown, held by the server, that every screen in the room is reading rather than each keeping its own.

✦ How it works

Three steps, no account.

Pick a length and press create

Give it a name if the room needs to know what the clock is for. Add a lead-in of a minute or two if people still have to open the link.

Send the link

It is copied for you. Paste it in the chat, the calendar invite, the slide, or open it on the screen at the front of the room. There is no room code and nothing for anyone to join.

Everyone finishes together

Every browser on the link reads the same countdown rather than keeping its own, so somebody who opens it late sees the time that is genuinely left. Pause it and the whole room stops; add five minutes and the whole room gets them.

✦ Where it earns its keep

What people share a timer for.

Anything with turns

Debates, retros, brainstorms, games. The clock is neutral in a way a person holding a phone is not.

Rooms with a screen

Open the link on the big display and on your laptop. They agree, because they are reading the same end time.

Remote and hybrid

Send the link in the chat. Nobody installs anything, nobody joins anything, and it works on a phone.

Handing over the clock

Whoever is chairing does not have to be the one watching. Everyone has it.

✦ Plainly

One clock, not thirty copies.

The countdown is kept by the server, and every screen in the room is reading it rather than running its own. That is what makes the next three true at once.

A pause everybody sees

Pause, resume, add time or reset, and it lands on every screen within a couple of seconds. Not your copy of the timer, the timer.

A wrong clock cannot break it

Every reply carries the server’s own time, and each browser corrects for the gap. A laptop set four minutes fast still finishes with the room.

Only you can change it

The controls belong to the browser that created the timer, never to the link. Thirty people can hold the link and none of them can stop the lesson.

And still: nobody signs in, there is no room to join and no code to type, no limit on how many people open it, and the only thing stored is a length and whatever you called it — deleted a day after the countdown ends.

✦ Also useful

Other ways to use a shared clock.

shared timer meeting timer classroom timer team timer

Or a plain timer, just for you

55 minute timer 1010 minute timer 1515 minute timer 2020 minute timer 2525 minute timer 3030 minute timer

✦ When the meeting ends

A shared clock is easy.
Shared work is the hard part.

The timer is free and always will be. What it cannot do is remember what the twenty minutes decided, or whose job the outcome became.

That is a shared workspace: goals, projects and tasks that belong to the group rather than to whoever created them, assignable to a person, with habits that keep a separate streak for everybody so nobody breaks anyone else’s. One subscription covers five people, and it is on your bill rather than theirs.

Start free →How shared workspaces work

✦ Questions

Shared timers, answered.

Creating one opens a room identified by an unguessable code, and that code is the whole of the link. Anyone who has it can watch; nobody signs in, and no email, name or account is involved on either side. The room holds a countdown and a label and nothing else about anybody, and it is deleted a day after it finishes.

No, and that is the point. Somebody who opens it four minutes late sees four minutes less on the clock, because everyone is counting to the same end, not counting their own length from when they arrived.

Everyone's clock stops. The countdown is held by the server rather than by each browser, so pausing, resuming, adding time and resetting all reach every screen in the room within about two seconds. Only the person who created the timer can do it: the controls live in their browser, not in the link, so sharing the link never shares the ability to stop the room.

Everyone who has the page open and has not muted it, yes, each in their own browser at the same moment. Sound is on by default and there is a mute toggle on the timer.

Yes, a day after the countdown ends the room is deleted and the link stops resolving. Until then anyone opening it sees the timer, including the finished state once it has run out. Nothing about you is in it to delete: a room holds a length, a label if you gave one, and nothing else.

No. Everyone watching reads the same small record a couple of times a minute and draws the countdown themselves, so a hundred people in a lecture hall costs about what one person costs.

One timer.Everybody watching it.