How to use it
- Open the page: the clock starts on its own and ticks every second.
- The chips show your UTC offset and time zone name, the current Unix timestamp and how long is left until midnight.
- Copy the time copies the hours, minutes and seconds as shown.
Whose time this is
Your own. The clock reads the system time of the device that opened the page, so it agrees with the clock in your menu bar rather than with a server somewhere. That is the honest arrangement for a page like this, but it also means the page cannot be more accurate than your own clock: if your machine has drifted, so has this.
The tick corrects itself against real time instead of counting a fixed 1000 milliseconds, so the seconds do not slide after the tab has been open for an hour. Switch to another tab and come back and the clock is still on the right second.
The chips
- UTC offset, plus the time zone name your browser reports.
- Unix time: seconds since 1 January 1970 UTC, the number most APIs and log formats use.
- Time until local midnight, counted down to the second.
Questions
What time is it right now?
The large digits at the top, updated every second from your own device clock. The date and weekday are on the line below.
Is this an atomic clock?
No. It shows your device time, which your operating system usually keeps synchronised over NTP. If you need reference time, check against a national time service; this page is honest about reading your machine.
What is the Unix number for?
It is the current timestamp in seconds since 1 January 1970 UTC. Handy when you are reading a log, filling a test payload or debugging a postback that carries a timestamp.
Why do the seconds look dimmer?
A deliberate hierarchy: hours and minutes are what you came for, and the seconds sit behind them. The digits themselves are never animated, because a number the page vouches for should not move.
