tooloora

15 Minute Timer — breaks, power nap, quarter hour

A quarter of an hour, preset. Long enough for a proper break or a short nap, with a signal that actually wakes you.

Runs locally — nothing is uploaded

15:00

Remaining

Minutes and seconds may go above 59: 90 in the minute field means one and a half hours.

Quick pick

Runs locally in your browser — nothing is sent.

Other durations

1 minute3 minutes5 minutes10 minutes20 minutes30 minutes45 minutes1 hourPomodoro

Fifteen minutes is the standard break: press start and the preset timer runs 900 seconds, then signals with sound and a visible alert. A quarter of an hour is long enough for a power nap, a real pause away from the screen or a focused block, and short enough to fit between two appointments.

Why is fifteen minutes the standard break?

Because German working time law uses it as the smallest usable unit. Section 4 of the Arbeitszeitgesetz requires at least 30 minutes of break for more than six hours of work and 45 minutes beyond nine hours, and it allows those breaks to be split into segments of at least fifteen minutes each. Anything shorter does not count as a rest break at all, which is why the quarter hour became the default everywhere.

Is fifteen minutes a good power nap?

It sits in the usual window. Sleep researchers recommend staying between ten and twenty minutes, because after roughly that point the body slides into deep sleep, and waking out of deep sleep produces the groggy, worse-than-before feeling known as sleep inertia. Fifteen minutes of lying down plus the few minutes it takes to fall asleep keeps you on the right side of that line.

Will the signal actually wake me?

The tone plays through your browser, so it depends on your volume and on the page staying open. Two things help: keep the tab open rather than closing the lid, and do not rely on the sound alone — the display switches to a clearly visible alert as well, and on a phone the page also triggers a short vibration where the browser supports it.

How to set the timer

  1. Press start — the quarter hour is already set.
  2. Put the device down but leave the tab open so the signal can play.
  3. At zero you get a tone, a visible alert and, on supported phones, a short vibration.

Frequently asked questions

Should I set fifteen or twenty minutes for a nap?

Both stay inside the recommended ten to twenty minute window. Take fifteen if you fall asleep quickly and twenty if you need a few minutes to drift off, since the clock starts when you press the button, not when you actually fall asleep.

Can I set a wake-up time instead of a duration?

Yes. Switch to alarm mode and enter a clock time; the tool calculates the distance to the next occurrence of that time itself, including the case where the time is already past today and therefore lands tomorrow.

Does the timer keep running when I switch tabs?

Yes. The remaining time is calculated from the timestamp at which you pressed start, not by counting ticks. Browsers slow background timers down to about one call per minute, and a sleeping device stops them completely — a counting timer would fall behind by exactly that amount. This one simply subtracts again when the tab comes back and shows the correct value.

Does the timer send anything to a server?

No. No server is involved at all: the countdown is a subtraction against your device clock, done entirely in JavaScript in your browser. There is no account, no cookie for the timer, and nothing is uploaded or sent anywhere. You can load the page, switch to airplane mode and the timer still runs — which is the simplest way to verify the claim yourself.