30 Second Timer
Half a minute is the most used short length there is: one toothbrush quadrant, one advertising spot, one elevator pitch, one rest between sets. Click once and it counts down from thirty.
0:30
Nothing plays until you press start.
The count runs against your device clock, so a tab left in the background still lands on time. The sound is the weak part: a phone that has put itself to sleep may never play it. Do not lean on this, or on any browser timer, where a missed alarm costs you something - medication, an exam, a step in cooking that burns.
What half a minute is for
Thirty seconds is the unit other things are built from. A two-minute toothbrushing routine is four quadrants of thirty seconds, because 4 x 30 comes to 120 seconds. The standard broadcast advertising spot is thirty seconds, and the fifteen-second version is a cut-down of it. So is the elevator pitch, which is named after roughly this much time.
It is also the default hold. Planks, wall sits and most stretches get timed at thirty seconds before anyone counts higher, it is the usual gap between light sets, and it is the turn limit that keeps a board game moving. In United States college basketball the shot clock runs thirty seconds.
The arithmetic
- Two runs fill a minute. 120 runs fill an hour.
- Four runs give you the two minutes of a full brushing routine.
- Three runs give you the 90 second timer.
Before you trust it with something that matters
Nearby lengths
Shorter windows are the 15 second timer and the 20 second timer. Everything from one minute upwards is on the online timer hub, and if you need to time something open-ended instead of fixed, use the stopwatch.