Free online kitchen timer for cooking and baking. Set minutes or seconds quickly with alarms, loops, and a simple, easy-to-read display. Features
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Free Online Kitchen Timer
Our kitchen timer should feel at home in your kitchen, where you can read it from across the room. The blurred kitchen background, bold high-contrast time display, and kitchen-appropriate alarm sounds make our timer feel like it part of your kitchen.
Set the minutes, press Start, and step away from the screen. The large time display stays readable from a distance, and the alarm sounds when the time is up.
What to Time in the Kitchen
A kitchen timer earns its place by handling time periods while you're busy cooking:
- Boiling eggs — Soft boiled: 4–5 minutes. Medium: 6–7 minutes. Hard boiled: 9–11 minutes. The difference between right and overdone is often less than a minute.
- Pasta and grains — Most pasta cooks in 8–12 minutes. Rice, quinoa, and other grains have timing windows where texture goes from nice to mushy quickly.
- Roasting vegetables — 20 to 45 minutes depending on size and temperature.
- Baking — Cookies, muffins, bread, and cakes have bake times where a few extra minutes makes a difference. Set timer when the oven door closes.
- Meat resting time — Steaks, roasts, and poultry need to rest after cooking. 5–20 minutes depending on the cut.
- Simmering sauces and soups — Long, slow simmers need a periodic check rather than constant watching.
- Steeping tea — Green tea: 2–3 minutes. Black tea: 3–5 minutes. Herbal: 5–7 minutes. Steeping too long turns a good cup bitter.
Kitchen Timer Features
The Kitchen Timer is pre-configured with settings for a cooking environment:
- High-visibility time display — Time displayed is large, bold, high-contrast, to be readable from across the room.
- Kitchen alarm sounds — Pre-set to bell and chime sounds that feel natural in a kitchen context. Choose from the full library of 50 sounds and tunes via Try Out Sounds & Tunes if you want something different.
- Alarm cycles — Set the alarm to ring multiple times so it cuts through kitchen noise. A single bell can be missed;a repeated sharp alarm less so.
- Loop — When the timer reaches zero it resets and starts again. Good for basting intervals, stirring reminders, or a cooking task that repeats on a regular cycle.
- Auto Restart — With Auto Restart on, pressing Reset stops the timer, resets it to your start time, and begins counting down again. Fast to re-run the same interval for the next batch.
- Save and share your setup — Configure the time, alarm sound, and cycles, then bokmark the URL via the icon under the timer display. Bookmark multiple kitchen timer setups for different uses. Then all are available with a couple clicks or taps (one to select, a second to start).
Kitchen Timer — Common Questions
Does this timer work on phones and tablets?
Yes. The Kitchen Timer works on any modern browser across desktop, mobile, and tablet. The display scales to fit your screen. Prop up a tablet on the counter and it reads like a dedicated kitchen appliance.
Will the alarm sound if I switch to another tab?
Yes. Whether you minimize the browser window or place the timer on another tab, alarms should sound.
Can I set the alarm to ring more than once?
Yes. Open Settings and set Alarm to repeat from 1 to 99 times. In a busy kitchen, setting it to ring 5-10 times makes it harder to miss.
Can I time two things at once?
Not easily, but here are two ways:
- Open the Kitchen Timer in two different branded browsers (i.e. Chrome and Firefox).
- Open the Kitchen Timer and another timer of a different name (i.e. our 5 Minute Timer or our 10 Minute Timer).
Our timers save their settings in local browser storage, so the above two methods let you have multiple timers that won't step on each other.
Can I change the background image?
Yes, but this is getting a bit technical. Open Advanced Settings and paste in a URL to a web-accessible image to replace the default kitchen background. You can set different images for light and dark modes independently.
How do I save my preferred kitchen timer setup?
Set your preferred time, alarm sound, and cycles, then click the icon under the time display and copy the URL. Bookmark it in your browser and your kitchen timer setup is now one click away.
