Countdown to Date

Choose a date and time, give the event a name, and the page becomes a live countdown showing months, weeks, days, hours, minutes and seconds remaining, with the event's name in the page title so it is visible even in a small tab. The countdown is recomputed from your device's clock every second and every time you open the page, so it survives reloads and days away. Your saved events stay in this browser; you can keep several and switch between them.

"How many months until the wedding?" has more than one answer, because months are not equal. This tool counts whole calendar months first (from 3 September to 3 February is five months), then the remaining days, and separately shows the total in weeks and in days so the numbers agree with a calendar rather than with a 30-day approximation. Days are calendar days in your time zone; a countdown to "1 January, 00:00" means midnight where you are, not where the event is. For a launch that happens at a single instant worldwide, convert the time first with the time zone converter.

• Planning backwards. With 87 days to a race or an exam, the countdown makes a training or revision plan concrete: 12 weeks, so 12 long runs, or 12 practice papers. Pair it with the study timer or the interval timer for the sessions themselves.
• Shared screens. Full-screen the page on an office TV for a product launch or on a hallway screen for the last day of term.
• Saving and travel. Divide the amount still to save by the weeks remaining; a weekly figure is easier to act on than a distant total.
• Anniversaries and birthdays. The birthday countdown repeats automatically each year and adds confetti; the retirement countdown shows working days as well as calendar days.

The countdown tool is the simpler sibling of this page, without event names or the months/weeks breakdown. For a duration ("40 minutes from now") use the timer; for a clock time later today use the alarm clock. All three keep working in a background tab, but only the timer and alarm make a sound when they finish, and only while the tab is open.