Candle countdown timer

At a glance

Why a candle tells time better than a clock, sometimes

The origin story of the candlelight skin, from the people who drew it.

The candlelight skin exists because of the end of the day — the stretch of dinner, bath, and stories where a bright red countdown would feel like an alarm clock in a library. Families already know this language: candles on cakes mark years, candles in church mark something older, and a candle burned down to the saucer has meant “the evening is over” for centuries. The skin just borrows the grammar.

So the scene is a room, not an instrument. The candle stands on a ceramic saucer in a dark space, and its flame is the only light source: it flickers at two frequencies so the whole room breathes with it, and a scatter of soft bokeh embers drifts upward like the dust above a real flame. The wax column shortens with the countdown — from two -thirds of the scene down to a stump — and it melts like wax actually melts: a liquid lip at the top, two frozen drips running down the sides, a dark wick leaning slightly as it shortens.

The finish was the part worth obsessing over. When the timer ends, the flame does not blink out; it goes out the way a candle does — the room's light fades over a second, a thin wisp of smoke curls up from the wick and wobbles away, and then the scene settles into embers. Children who watch bedtime timers every night learn to read that smoke curl as the day's last event, and it lands far softer than a red flash ever could.

The options are small furniture for the same room. Ivory is the classic dinner candle; crimson suits December; sage quietly became the favourite; onyx is for people who burn candles in home-cinema dark. The triple wick exists because a three-flame candle reads as “a generous evening” from across the table — and because watching three tiny flames negotiate with each other is its own small pleasure.

How the scene moves

• Idle. The candle stands tall, the flame flickers gently, and embers drift up through the dark.
• Running. The wax column shortens with the countdown — from about two-thirds of the scene height at the start to a low stump near the end — while the flame's flicker lights the room and the saucer below.
• The last stretch. The candle is a stub with a leaning wick; the room leans in with it. Everything the flame has been lighting stays lit — just closer to the wax now.
• Zero. The flame goes out and the room light fades; a wisp of smoke curls up and wobbles away for a few seconds. A soft music-box chord plays and the readout flips to +mm:ss overtime until you reset.

Make it yours

The sliders button in the bottom control row opens Scene settings. Choices are stored in your browser and survive reloads; nothing is sent anywhere.

Two shared panels live in the same place for every skin. Sound picks the finish chime (or “match the skin”), sets the volume, and adds an optional tick for each of the last ten seconds. Display moves the countdown readout — bottom, top, centre, bottom-left or bottom-right — and recolours it: follow theme, warm white, white, gold, ice blue or coral.

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The sound it makes

When the candle goes out, a soft music-box chord — four rising notes over a low foundation — decays slowly across two seconds, like the room exhaling. Like everything in timer.cool, it is synthesized by the browser at the moment it plays: no audio files, nothing to download. The Sound panel can swap in a bell, digital beep, wood block or alarm, add a tick to each of the last ten seconds, or you can mute with M.

On a projector or TV

On a big screen the candlelight skin earns the word cosy: a dim room, one flame, and a countdown the whole table can read. Press F and every control disappears. While a timer runs, the page holds a wake lock so the display does not dim before the candle does.

The keyboard map: Space start/pause, F fullscreen, R reset, M mute, +/− give or take a minute while running, L repeat. Two honest limits: on an iPhone the ringer switch silences web audio, and aggressive battery-saver modes can override the wake lock on some devices.

Who the candle is for

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