5 Minute Timer
Press Start to count down 5 minutes.
What a 5 minute timer is good for
Five minutes is the most searched short timer for a reason: it feels small enough to start anything. Telling yourself you will only do five minutes of a dreaded task is a well-known trick for beating procrastination, and the shrinking disc makes the promise concrete.
Classroom brain breaks
Short movement or breathing breaks of about five minutes help pupils refocus after a long stretch of sitting. Project the timer so the class can see when the break ends.
A stretch at the desk
Physiotherapists recommend getting up and moving at least once an hour. Five minutes is enough for a set of neck, shoulder and hip stretches.
The brain-dump
Write down every task and worry in your head for five minutes without stopping. It clears your head before hard work.
Tidying one room
Pick one room and tidy until the disc runs out. Five minutes a day keeps clutter from building up.
Small admin jobs
Reply to one email, pay one bill or book one appointment. A five minute limit stops small jobs expanding to fill an hour.
To pace yourself, glance at the disc rather than the numbers. With the 5 minute timer running, half the colour has gone after 2 minutes 30 seconds, and when only a quarter is left you have 1 minute 15 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 5 minutes are for.
How to use the 5 minute timer
It is ready
The dial is already set to 5 minutes. To change it, drag the disc, tap a preset or open Custom.
Press Start
Or press the Space bar. The red disc shrinks back towards 12 o’clock as the time runs down.
Watch the disc
Read the time left at a glance, or open fullscreen for a big dial that fills the screen.
Time’s up
Your alarm plays until you press Stop. Press Reset or R to run the same time again.
5 minutes in other units
| Seconds | 300 |
|---|---|
| Minutes | 5 |
| Hours | 0.0833 |
| Fraction of a day | 1/288 |
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.