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Timer / Exam Timer

Exam Timer — One Countdown For The Whole Room

Put the countdown on the front screen and, if students have devices, on theirs too. Everyone sees the identical time remaining, and that is what makes an exam clock fair. Set it to your exam length and share the link before the paper starts.

Anyone opening your link right now sees exactly this.

Change the countdown

You can set the time on the board itself. Click the digits and roll them with the arrows, or just type it. These controls do the same job, plus counting down to a date.

Opens the same countdown the code was made for.

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For exam halls: use the Light board style

Exam halls are often brightly lit, and a dark screen can wash out on a projector under fluorescent lights. Use the Light style toggle above (next to Board and Minimal) for a high-contrast, dark-on-white display built specifically for that. It's the same countdown, just easier to read from the back row.

How to use the Exam Timer

  1. Set the exam length straight on the board. Click the minutes and use the arrows, or just type it (type 90 00 for an hour and a half). You can also count down to a fixed finish time using "…or until a date & time".
  2. Put the board on the room's front screen and press Fullscreen so the countdown is readable from the back.
  3. If your exam rules permit candidate devices, press Show QR code so students can open the identical countdown on their own screens.
  4. Press Start countdown as you begin the paper. Every screen hits zero at the same instant and plays the chime.

Common questions

Can students see the same countdown on their own devices during a test?

Yes, if your exam rules permit devices. Every device that opens the link shows the identical time remaining. Many exam contexts restrict student devices entirely, in which case display it on the room's front screen only.

What happens if a student's device clock is wrong?

CountLink corrects for it. When the page opens, the device checks its clock against a reference time; if it's off, the countdown runs on corrected time and a line under the board says by how much. So a laptop whose clock is two minutes out still shows the same time left as everyone else. Only a device that can't reach the site at that moment falls back to its own clock.

Is this accurate enough for a formal, timed exam?

It's accurate to about a second across every device, since each one counts down independently against the same shared timestamp, the same approach any client-side countdown uses. For extremely high-stakes timing, follow your institution's official exam-clock policy.