What a 20 minute timer is for
Twenty minutes is the nap that works. Long enough to restore alertness, short enough to stay out of deep sleep and wake without the fog.
What people set it for
- A power nap that avoids deep-sleep grogginess
- Dried pasta, rice, or a tray in the oven
- A twenty-minute workout or walk
- A timeboxed meeting that actually ends
How this timer behaves
The countdown is stored as the moment it should finish, not as a number being decremented, so switching tabs or minimising the window cannot make it run late, and pausing and resuming is exact. Through the final minute the readout and its ring turn red and pulse, giving you a warning before the alert rather than only at it.
It does not start on its own. The alarm is generated in your browser, and browsers keep audio silent until you interact with the page — so a timer that started by itself would be a timer that finished in silence. One tap on start is what makes the sound work.