The timer and stopwatch have returned | Screenshot by Jay Peters / The Verge
Googleโs handy timer and stopwatch that you can use right from Search have returned. The tools have been unavailable for weeks, but Google public search liaison Danny Sullivan announced that the timer was back in a tweet on Wednesday.
To use the timer, just type โset a timer for [however long you need],โ and the top result will be a timer that automatically starts to count down. If you want to edit the timer, click on the numbers counting down. To use the stopwatch, Google โstopwatchโ and click the โstartโ button on the box that appears. You can also tab back and forth between the timer and the stopwatch if one of them already appears in your search results.
Welcome back “Google set a timer for X minutes.” Kudos to the team that worked to get this working again. pic.twitter.com/I6V8bZCm7i
โ Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) August 17, 2022
Google first introduced the timer and stopwatch in 2013, but reports indicated they disappeared from search results sometime in mid-July. On August 1st, Sullivan confirmed in a tweet to The Verge that they were unavailable due to an โissueโ and that the team expected to bring them back โfairly soon.โ Now that theyโre back, you can time things to your heartโs content once more.