15 Minute Timer

Press Start to count down 15 minutes.

This free 15 minute timer counts down 15 minutes with a shrinking red disc you can read at a glance. 15 minutes is 900 seconds (nine hundred seconds). It is ideal for a tidy sprint, a lesson segment, a short nap or a quiz round.

Share:WhatsAppXReddit

Nearby timers

What a 15 minute timer is good for

Fifteen minutes, a quarter of an hour, is one of the most useful blocks of time there is. It is long enough for real focus but short enough that you can almost always find one in a busy day.

Tidy sprints

Popular home-organising routines suggest decluttering for fifteen minutes a day. Pick one area and stop when the colour runs out.

Lesson segments

Teachers often split an hour into four fifteen minute chunks, such as starter, teaching, practice and review.

A short nap

Fifteen minutes is a classic nap length for adults: enough to feel refreshed, short enough to avoid deep sleep.

Quiz rounds

Pub quizzes and classroom quizzes commonly allow fifteen minutes per round.

To pace yourself, glance at the disc rather than the numbers. With the 15 minute timer running, half the colour has gone after 7 minutes 30 seconds, and when only a quarter is left you have 3 minutes 45 seconds to wrap up. Open fullscreen if the timer needs to be read across a room, and add a label so everyone knows what the 15 minutes are for.

How to use the 15 minute timer

  1. It is ready

    The dial is already set to 15 minutes. To change it, drag the disc, tap a preset or open Custom.

  2. Press Start

    Or press the Space bar. The red disc shrinks back towards 12 o’clock as the time runs down.

  3. Watch the disc

    Read the time left at a glance, or open fullscreen for a big dial that fills the screen.

  4. Time’s up

    Your alarm plays until you press Stop. Press Reset or R to run the same time again.

15 minutes in other units

15 minutes equals
Seconds900
Minutes15
Hours0.25
Fraction of a day1/96

Why use this timer

Why a visual timer helps

A shrinking disc turns time into something you can see. You read how much is left at a glance, without doing sums on a clock, and an invisible deadline feels less stressful when you can watch it approach. That is why visual timers are a staple in classrooms and are widely used by people with ADHD and autistic children and adults. Read our guide to using a visual timer, how it helps with ADHD time blindness, classroom transitions and autism.

Why this timer is accurate

The countdown is anchored to your device clock rather than counted in animation frames. It does not drift if you switch tabs or your screen sleeps: it keeps running in the background and still sounds the alarm on time. When you come back, the disc jumps straight to the correct position.

Frequently asked questions

There are 900 seconds in 15 minutes. That is 0.25 of an hour, or nine hundred seconds written out.

A fifteen minute decluttering sprint, one segment of a lesson, a short refreshing nap, a quiz round or a focused block of work in a busy day.

Yes. The 15 minute countdown is anchored to your device clock rather than counted frame by frame, so it stays accurate in a background tab and the alarm still fires when the 15 minutes are up.

No. The 15 minute timer runs in your browser on phone, tablet and desktop. It is free, and there is no account, app or download.

Yes. Press the fullscreen button or the F key. The dial fills the screen, so the remaining part of the 15 minutes is readable from the back of the room.

Yes, once this page has loaded. Nothing is sent over the network while the 15 minutes count down, so a dropped connection will not stop the timer.

Yes. Naps of ten to twenty minutes keep you in light sleep, so you wake up feeling more alert rather than groggy. Fifteen minutes sits right in the middle of that range.

Four. That is why many planners, therapists and teachers divide the hour into fifteen minute blocks.

More timers