2 Minute Timer

A hundred and twenty seconds

Two minutes is 120 seconds, and thirty runs of it fill an hour. It also splits neatly: it is four blocks of thirty seconds, which is exactly how the two-minute brush is meant to be spent, one quadrant of the mouth at a time. If you would rather hear the change of quadrant, run the 30 second timer four times instead.

Where two minutes turns up

• The full toothbrush – two minutes, four quadrants of thirty seconds each.
• A minor penalty in ice hockey, which is two minutes in the box.
• The two-minute warning in American football.
• Short pitch and lightning-talk slots, where two minutes is the usual hard limit.
• Turn limits in board and party games, when a one-minute turn proves too mean.

Two minutes as a deadline

The other use is as a rule rather than a length: if a job takes under two minutes, do it now rather than write it down. Used that way the timer is a check on the guess. Most tasks people call two-minute jobs are not, and one run of this clock settles the argument.

Near neighbours

Half of it is the 1 minute timer. One step up is the 3 minute timer, which is a boxing round and a soft-boiled egg. Every other length is on the timer page.

Accuracy

The clock runs against your system clock, not against a counter that a sleeping tab can stall, so a backgrounded tab still lands on zero at the right moment. The sound is the weak part: a phone that puts itself to sleep may never play it. Do not lean on this for anything where missing the alarm matters – medication, an exam, a step in cooking that burns.