A free alarm clock in your browser
This online alarm clock wakes you up with a real sound, straight from a browser tab. There is no app to install and no account to create. Open the page on a laptop, a desktop computer, a tablet or a phone, set the time and press Set alarm. That is all it takes.
It suits anyone who needs a wake up alarm away from their phone: students in a dorm, travelers in a hotel room, remote workers who nap between meetings, or anyone who simply wants the phone out of the bedroom. Once the page has loaded, the alarm and its sounds keep working without an internet connection, because the sounds are generated by the browser itself.
How to set the alarm
Wake up at a set time
The hour and the minutes sit on two wheels. Turn them with the mouse wheel, drag them with a finger or use the arrow keys. If you prefer, tap a number to open a grid and pick the value directly. A third wheel switches between AM and PM.
A safety check guards against the classic AM/PM mix-up. If your alarm would ring more than 12 hours from now, the page asks you to confirm before it is set. Picking 7:00 PM when you meant 7:00 AM gets caught before bedtime, not the next morning.
Wake up after a delay
Switch the mode from “at” to “in” to count from now instead. Ring in 20 minutes for a power nap, in 45 minutes for a reminder or in 8 hours for a full night. It is the quickest way to set a nap alarm without doing any math.
Choose the sound
Five sounds are available: a bell, a chime, a classic beep, a digital beep and a gentle rise that starts softly. The list opens in a large wheel in the middle of the screen. Turn it to hear each sound, then tap the center to choose. You also decide how it rings: until you stop it, or just once.
Once the alarm is set
The same wheels now count down the hours, minutes and seconds left. A short sentence confirms your choice, such as “Set for 7:30 AM, with a bell.” Keep the tab open. You can still use other tabs in the meantime.
Night mode, snooze and stop
A screen that goes dark
Night mode is on by default. As soon as the alarm is set, the screen dims. After 8 seconds without a touch or a mouse move, the background turns pure black and only the countdown remains, in a very dark gray. It gives off almost no light, which is kinder to your sleep and saves battery on OLED screens. Move the mouse or touch the screen to bring the display back for a moment. If you would rather keep the screen at full brightness, tap the Night mode button to turn it off.
When the alarm rings
Two big buttons appear. Stop ends the alarm. Snooze 5 min gives you five more minutes, then rings again. If you chose a sound that rings until you stop it, it keeps going until you press one of them.
Tips for an alarm you can count on
- Keep the computer awake. A sleeping laptop cannot ring. Plug it in and turn off sleep mode for the night.
- Keep the tab open. Closing the tab cancels the alarm. Other tabs are fine.
- Test the volume. Turn the device volume up, check that it is not muted and listen to the sound before bed.
- On a phone or tablet, keep the page in front and the device plugged in. The page asks the screen to stay on, but some devices apply their own power settings.
- Bookmark your usual time. There is no daily repeating alarm. Save the page for your time, for example the 7:00 AM alarm, and open it each night.
- Need two alarms? Each tab holds one alarm. Open a second tab for a second one, or for a backup a few minutes later.
- Match the sound to your sleep. The gentle rise starts softly for light sleepers; the classic beep is harder to ignore for deep sleepers.
What people use it for
- Waking up for work or school. Popular times have their own page with the hour already set, like 6:00 AM, 6:30 AM or 8:00 AM.
- Early starts. A flight, a train or an early shift: the 4:30 AM alarm comes with bedtimes that fit a short night.
- Naps. Switch to “in” and set 20 minutes. The 20 minute timer works well for daytime naps too.
- Reminders at a set time. Leave for an appointment, join a call or take a dish out of the oven at 6:15 PM.
- Hotel rooms and travel. No need to figure out the bedside clock radio or trust a wake-up call.
- Shift work. Night workers can set an alarm for late morning, like the 11:00 AM alarm, while night mode keeps the screen black.
- Focus sessions. For blocks of work and breaks, the Pomodoro timer is a better fit, and for short countdowns in the kitchen, the online timer shows a progress bar.
Sleep cycles: when to go to bed
Sleep runs in cycles of about 90 minutes. Each one moves from light sleep to deep sleep and then to dream (REM) sleep. Waking at the end of a cycle often feels easier than being pulled out of deep sleep in the middle of one. Most people also need around 15 minutes to fall asleep.
A simple rule is to count back from your wake-up time in steps of 90 minutes, then take off 15 minutes more. For a 7:00 AM alarm, that gives:
| Bedtime | Sleep cycles | Hours of sleep |
|---|---|---|
| 9:45 PM | 6 | 9 hours |
| 11:15 PM | 5 | 7.5 hours |
| 12:45 AM | 4 | 6 hours |
Every preset alarm page lists the bedtimes for its own hour. General guidelines suggest that most adults need about seven to nine hours of sleep a night.
These are general rules of thumb, not medical advice. Cycle length varies from person to person and from night to night.
Browser alarm, phone app or bedside clock?
A phone alarm is handy, but it keeps the phone next to your pillow with all its notifications. A bedside alarm clock needs an outlet or batteries and often glows all night. A browser alarm sits in between: any screen becomes an alarm clock, it costs nothing, and night mode keeps the room dark.
The trade-off is simple: the device has to stay on with the tab open. For a nap at your desk, a hotel night with a laptop or a weekend sleep-in, that is rarely a problem.
Private by design
There is no account. Your settings, such as the color, the sound and your last alarm time, are saved in your own browser on your device. Nothing is sent to a server.
Easy to read and to use
The digits are large. Full screen mode hides everything else, with a small bar to change the size or leave full screen; it appears when you move the mouse or touch the screen. While the alarm runs, the settings fade away after a few seconds and come back with a touch. Pick any background color from the round button at the bottom right, including a black and white (B/W) option.
A short history of the alarm clock
People have long tried to make time wake them up. The Greek philosopher Plato is said to have used a water clock that whistled to call his students in the morning. Some early mechanical clocks in medieval monasteries rang a bell to wake the monks for night prayers.
In 1787, Levi Hutchins, a clockmaker in Concord, New Hampshire, built an alarm clock for himself. It could ring at only one time: 4:00 AM, the hour he got up. In France, Antoine Redier patented an adjustable mechanical alarm clock in 1847, and in the United States, Seth E. Thomas patented a wind-up alarm clock in 1876 that could be set for any time.
Before alarm clocks were cheap, many factory workers in Britain and Ireland paid “knocker-uppers” to tap on their windows with long poles at the right hour. Snooze buttons became common on electric alarm clocks in the 1950s. Today the same job fits in a browser tab, with a gentle sound and a dark screen.