8 Minute Timer — Online Countdown With Alarm

8 minutes at a glance

In seconds	480 seconds
In hours	0.1333 hours
In milliseconds	480,000 ms
Written as	00:08:00

On a timesheet 8 minutes is 0.1333 hours. In code it is 480,000 milliseconds, usually written 8 * 60 * 1000 rather than as the literal number.

What fits into 8 minutes

Two Tabata rounds
A guided body scan
Emptying a dishwasher slowly

Eight minutes is two Tabata blocks, or one unhurried guided body scan. It is also the length most sleep guidance gives for how long falling asleep should take: much faster suggests exhaustion, much slower suggests your body clock disagrees with your bedtime.

Running a 8 minute block well

Name the one taskWrite it down in a sentence with a verb in it. A block that starts with 'what should I do' loses its first three minutes.
Remove the three usual exitsPhone in another room, unrelated tabs closed, drink already poured. Almost every abandoned block ends via one of those three.
Work to the alarm, not to doneIf the task finishes early, use the remainder to set up the next block rather than starting something new.
Write the next actionSpend the last thirty seconds noting where you got to. It is the difference between resuming in ten seconds and re-reading for four minutes.

For work, eight minutes is enough to draft something short and awkward, which is exactly the kind of task that expands to fill an afternoon when it is not timed.

Other lengths

Need a little more or less time? Try the 7 minute timer or the 10 minute timer.

Questions people ask

What is a good use of eight minutes?

Two four-minute training blocks, a body scan, a short reading stretch, or the difficult message you have been rewriting in your head all morning.

How many seconds are in 8 minutes?

There are 480 seconds in 8 minutes, because every minute contains 60 seconds.

Can I pause the 8 minute timer and carry on?

Yes. The space bar or the pause button stops it where it is, and pressing again resumes from the same point rather than restarting at 8:00.

Does the countdown drift if I switch tabs?

No. It reads your device clock rather than counting animation frames, so a background tab, a locked screen or a slow connection cannot make it lose time.

Is the 8 minute timer free to use?

Yes, for personal and commercial use, with no sign-up and no limit. Use it in classrooms, gyms and streams without asking.