Delivery
A timer that escalates if you ignore it
A kitchen timer makes one noise and then gives up. If you were in the garden, it may as well not have run. Timelee's timer uses the same escalating delivery as every other reminder, so the end of the countdown is something that reaches you.
The problem with every timer you have used
Timers are the one alert people genuinely intend to act on immediately, and they are the alert with the weakest delivery of all.
It beeps once, into an empty room
Twelve minutes is exactly long enough to go upstairs. The beep happens, nothing repeats, and you find out it finished by the smell.
It is on the wrong device
You started it on the laptop and then walked away from the laptop, because the whole reason you set a timer was to do something else.
It gets closed by accident
A browser tab timer dies with the tab. A phone timer survives, but only if the app that owns it survives the battery saver.
Two directions, and what each is for
Timelee's timer runs both ways, which covers two quite different jobs that are usually crammed into one control.
Count down to zero
The ordinary case. Fifteen minutes on the oven, twenty-five on a work block, ten on a rest between sets. It reaches zero and then it rings.
Count up from now
A stopwatch from an offset that runs until you pause it. For the things where the question is not when does it end but how long has this actually taken.
Adjust it while it runs
Add fifteen seconds or five minutes to a running timer without restarting it, because the pasta is never done at exactly the minute the packet claims.
Pause, resume, reset or restart
Four separate controls rather than one button that means different things depending on how long you hold it.
Name it and file it
Give the timer a name and a category so that when it finishes you know which of the three running timers just went off.
What happens when it reaches zero
This is the part other timers do not have. The end of a countdown is a delivery, and you choose which one it gets — the same escalating delivery used by every reminder in Timelee.
- notif_type 1
Regular
A full-screen alarm with a tone you picked. Right for the eggs, the tea, the twenty-minute nap.
- notif_type 2
App Call
The phone rings full screen like an incoming call inside Timelee. Harder to walk past than a beep, and it costs nothing.
- notif_type 3Recommended
Important
The alarm first, then the in-app call if you did not acknowledge it. Two chances at the end of a countdown you cannot afford to sleep through.
Set it up on a laptop. It rings on your phone.
A web timer keeps counting across a page reload, but it can only raise an alert while its tab is open, and the app says so while you are setting it. The Android and iOS apps are where a timer rings properly: full screen, at the tone you chose, on the device that is with you. That is the split for every escalating alert in Timelee — the browser is for setting things up, the phone is for being reached.
Where timers run
| Feature | Android | iOS | Web |
|---|---|---|---|
| Start a countdown or count-up | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Add time, pause, resume, reset | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Keeps counting after a page reload | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Rings with the tab or app closed | Yes | Yes | No |
| Escalate to a full-screen in-app call | Yes | Yes | No |
Anything that has to make a noise in another room needs to be on the phone.
What a timer inherits from the rest of Timelee
Because it is built on the same reminder machinery, a timer is not a separate little tool sitting in a corner of the app.
A tone you chose
The tone library runs to 33 across six groups, so the timer that means the oven and the timer that means the call do not make identical noises.
A name and a category
Three timers running at once stop being ambiguous the moment each of them says what it is for.
Sits with the rest of the day
A running timer is part of what is happening now, not a thing hidden behind a separate app you have to remember is open.
Finished timers are recorded
Useful when the question afterwards is how long the thing actually took, rather than how long you had planned for it.
Give the end of the countdown somewhere to go
A timer is only as good as the noise at the end of it. Choose the noise, and choose what happens if you miss it.