The term ‘countdown’ refers to backward counting, which indicates the time remaining before an event is scheduled to occur.
Countdowns serve various purposes, ranging from orchestrating the controlled detonation of explosives and signaling the commencement of a race to marking the arrival of the New Year and heralding the start of eagerly awaited events.
You might have used a countdown timer when putting something in the oven, exercising, and completing a task. In many cases, it helps you stay focused and increase productivity.
For example, when you look at the countdown display (1 Day, 2 Hours, and 3 Minutes), you feel a sense of urgency as the time gets closer. Somehow, it motivates you to get the task done.
Think about it; if you have a set of small projects that you can complete before time runs out on the timer, you feel proud and motivated for the upcoming challenge.
The good thing is that many free countdown apps are readily available on both the PlayStore and AppStore. We’ve curated a selection of the finest options to assist you in managing your time on your mobile device.
Whether you’re counting down to an upcoming event, a significant date, or simply aiming to stay well-organized with your schedule, these apps will streamline your time management efforts.
Table of Contents
18. Event Countdown – Calendar App
Platform: iOS | AndroidPlus Point: Add icons and notes to events Price: Free | Premium version costs $9.99 per year
Event Countdown is a beautiful calendar and reminder app for important moments and dates in your life. You can use it for various events, ranging from holidays and parties to fitness targets and goals.
You can create unlimited countdowns, choose from 450 color icons, add notes to your events, and share them on Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, and Twitter. It stores all your event dates in one place and provides you with basic notifications.
The premium version unlocks an array of exclusive features, enhancing your experience with the app. These benefits include an ad-free interface, the ability to categorize your events, more detailed and informative notifications, and seamless cloud synchronization.
17. Countdowns – Track Events
Platform: iOS | MacPlus Point: Dark-themed interface Price: Free | Premium version costs $7.99
It’s a versatile timer and countdown app suitable for various personal, event-related, and organizational needs.
The app comes with colorful widgets for iPhone, iPad, and Mac, allowing you to display timers on your device’s home screen. You can create an unlimited number of timers to track multiple events at the same time.
Repeating timers are also available, which is useful for events that occur regularly, like birthdays.
The premium version of the app offers iCloud sync, custom notifications, compact display mode, and lists for organizing your countdowns. If you are looking for a reliable timer, especially for the Apple Watch, this is it.
16. Countdown°
Platform: iOSPlus Point: Organize your countdowns in categories Price: Free | Pro version costs $0.99
Countdown not only keeps you informed about your crucial schedules and events on a daily basis but also boasts a user-friendly interface. It offers a range of visual enhancements such as blur effects and vector images, along with practical features like pattern lock protection, iCloud backup, and support for widget themes.
The app goes the extra mile by allowing you to import events from your calendar, sort them efficiently, categorize them, set up recurring event cycles, and customize reminders. All these elements come together to create a visually appealing and highly functional application.
15. Exam Countdown Lite
Platform: iOS | AndroidPlus Point: Suitable for all students preparing for exams at all levels Price: Free | Premium version costs $5.49 per year
Exam Countdown is designed to help students, teachers, and schools prepare for exams, tests, and other important academic deadlines. It offers various features to make the exam preparation process more organized and efficient.
First of all, it lets you create unlimited exam countdowns and store all your exam dates in one place. The timer displays the number of years, days, hours, minutes, and seconds remaining until each exam.
You can color-code your exams to categorize them based on subjects or importance, making it visually intuitive to identify different exams. Choose from 400+ icons to customize each exam or test entry. There is also an option to add notes to your exam entries.
The premium version of the app offers an ad-free experience and advanced features like detailed notifications, cloud synchronization, and the ability to track academic progress over time.
14. Reminder & Countdown
Platform: iOSPlus Point: Share your reminders through SMS, Email, or social network platform Price: Free | Pro version costs $2.99
Like all other countdown apps, this app is designed to remind you about your meetings, appointments, common-soon holidays, and long-awaited events.
It presents the information of events in a nice way and allows you to configure every small detail such as icon, font, alert sound, background, and many other things. You can import birthdays from the Address book and import events from the iOS Calendar app and Reminders app.
The app offers a wealth of sharing options, allowing you to share your countdowns with anyone through various communication channels, including SMS, Email, Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, and numerous other social network services.
13. Countdown Widget
Platform: iOS | AndroidPlus Point: 4×1, 5×1 dynamic widgets Price: Free
This widget takes the excitement of counting down to the next level. It enables you to inject even more personalization into the experience by allowing you to attach photos to your events, tailor each timer to your preferences, and watch the countdown as it approaches the significant moments of your events.
There are numerous ways to personalize the countdown and make it unique. For instance, you can add background pictures, turn on the slideshow, and select from various combinations of units (such as months, days, minutes, seconds, and event heartbeats) to count down with.
12. DayCount
Platform: iOSPlus Point: Supports decimal counting Price: Free | Premium version costs $9.99
DayCount helps you remember important events, stay organized, and boost your productivity. It offers a wide range of features to manage events, both upcoming and past.
Countdown and track events in various time units, including years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, and seconds. Set goals and create positive habits by aiming for the longest streak of productive days. Create widgets with unique combinations of filters, fonts, textures, and borders.
You can add countless events and customize them with themes. View multiple events in grids, adjust events’ visibility by increasing contrast, and resize them with regular, medium, and large options.
The app also offers daily summary alerts to notify you of your top 5 events or streaks.
11. Days • Event Countdown
Platform: iOSPlus Point: Simplicity and ease of use Price: Free | Premium version costs $1.99
We commence our preparations for special events well in advance, as crafting memorable moments demands significant time and effort. This is where ‘Days’ becomes an invaluable tool, guaranteeing that you execute your plans flawlessly and leave nothing to chance.
The app is extremely easy to use and comes with a variety of customization options. Subtle animation, intuitive swiping, and beautiful imagery set it apart from other countdown apps. Moreover, the built-in reminder promptly updates you on the proximity of your event without requiring you to open the app.
10. The Big Day
Platform: Android | iOSPlus Point: Includes to-do lists and budget planner Price: Free | Ad-free version costs $2.99 | Pro version costs $4.99
This comprehensive wedding planning app comes with a wide range of tools and features. Whether you want a simple, user-friendly platform or DIY dashboard to plan your big day, this app provides a convenient and personalized experience.
It allows you to create and personalize multiple event countdowns using your own pictures. Make a visually appealing countdown to your wedding day using different colors, fonts, and background images.
It has a task management feature with checklists. This enables you to create tasks and reorder them according to your priorities. You can track to-dos with built-in categories such as budget, venue, decoration, and styling.
A free countdown widget for your home screen allows you to see the remaining time until your wedding. You can use your own photo and choose from various widget layouts and sizes to match your preferences.
9. Days Counter
Platform: AndroidPlus Point: Material design look Price: Free
Days Counter is a lightweight app that shows the remaining days for an event or days elapsed after the event. It could be useful in various scenarios, for example, if you want to know how long you have been free from smoking or how long you have been eating healthy.
You can customize every event using dozens of inbuilt backgrounds, fonts, and colors. To track important events on a daily basis, you can create a highly customizable widget on your home screen.
8. Time Until
Platform: AndroidPlus Point: Online gallery with 100+ free images Price: Free
With this app, you can create stylish countdowns for any upcoming or past events. While the timer is incredibly precise down to the second, you have the flexibility to choose one or more units (such as years, months, weeks, working days, minutes, and seconds) for each countdown.
The app features two widgets: one showcases regular-sized countdowns, while the other presents smaller countdowns for your convenience. You can opt for a dark mode or activate immersive mode by double-tapping for a full-screen, distraction-free experience.
7. Countdown Time
Platform: AndroidPlus Point: Hundreds of HD backgrounds Price: Free
Countdown Time elegantly preserves your cherished life moments. It offers multiple themes, hundreds of HD backgrounds, and a fully customizable widget to monitor and track as many events as you like.
You have the liberty to personalize each event with display modes and headings and tailor your countdown to display in years, months, weeks, or days. The daily countdown notification ensures that you remain enthused as the day of your upcoming events approaches.
6. Big Days – Events Countdown
Platform: Android | iOSPlus Point: Comes with a reminder alarm Price: Free | Pro version costs $3.99
Big Days is a lightweight and stylish app to remember and track your events in a simple and quick way. It can be used for appointments, exams, birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, and other major events.
You can customize the interface the way you want — select from thousands of free pictures on Pixabay, create an alarm for individual events, and customize the font and color of the app.
Choose a favorite event to be displayed every time they open the app. You can even create notifications for each individual event. This feature helps ensure that you never forget important appointments or occasions.
There is also an option to share your event on popular social networks or save it, print it, or even utilize it as your background wallpaper.
5. Countdown Calendar
Platform: AndroidPlus Point: Captures all your life’s achievements Price: Free | Pro version costs $3.99
The app is designed to capture important events in your life — whether you wish to commemorate past milestones or anticipate those yet to come.
You can use it to find how long you have been on a diet, how much time is left before the long-awaited vacation, and when your important documents (such as insurance and passport) are expiring. In fact, the app can remind you to pay your bills on time.
Events can be set in any time format (years, months, days, hours, minutes, and seconds). You can separate events by groups (such as documents, bills, birthdays, etc.) or by date (past and future). Add multiple notifications (reminders) about any particular event days or minutes before it happens.
The app allows you to enable active mode, which keeps your display on all the time. Plus, there are options to backup, restore, and transfer the database when you change the device. However, the latter option is only available in the pro version, which costs $3.99 (one-time fee).
4. Hold – Make It Happen
Platform: Android | iOSPlus Point: Captures all your life’s achievements Price: Free
Hold is quite different than all the other apps listed here. It is useful for those people who can’t focus and easily get distracted by unnecessary notifications.
Hold rewards you for not using your smartphone.
The app is designed to help you concentrate and stop your habit of regularly checking your phone. When you want to focus on your work, simply start Hold.
The app uses a reward system to keep you away from your phone. For every 20 minutes you are not touching your phone, you earn 10 points. Collect enough points to unlock great rewards and various coupons.
According to some user reviews, the redeeming points system appears unnecessary and should be revamped. Nevertheless, for others, it proves effective and significantly enhances their productivity.
3. Countdown to Anything
Platform: Android | iOSPlus Point: Share countdown with friends even if they don’t have the app installed Price: Free | Premium version costs $2.99
As the name suggests, Countdown to Anything allows you to track and anticipate any upcoming or past events.
Whether you want to count down to special occasions (like weddings, holidays, and birthdays) or you need a countdown for more specific purposes like appointments, books, movies, and games, this app offers a range of features to make the countdown experience unique and tailored to your needs.
It offers a rich library of cute icons that covers almost all occasions, including birthdays, holidays, weddings, baby due dates, parties, movies, games, and appointments.
For users with too many countdowns, the app offers the convenience of adding custom tags to categorize and organize countdowns neatly. It also allows them to add notes with information like travel details or birthday present ideas.
The premium version of the app enhances your experience by providing access to exclusive features, including home screen widgets, a library of over 150 exclusive icons, and limitless options for customizing colors. It is available as a one-time purchase with no recurring fees.
2. Date Countdown App
Platform: AndroidPlus Point: Mulitple days countdown screen widgets Price: Free
This is a plain, simple, and accurate countdown app. It beautifully displays the number of days remaining for major events such as love anniversaries, birthdays, and paydays.
You can customize the timer the way you want: edit the background image, blur the image, change the color of the text, or hide text and display it as a photo widget.
The app also has an in-built calculator, which counts the number of days between two dates or finds a particular date based on the number of days before and after a given date.
1. Countdown Days App & Widget
Platform: AndroidPlus Point: Big collection of stickers and stock images Price: Free
The app counts the days, hours, and minutes until your special event. It could be your vacation, wedding, baby’s due date, or retirement. You can add as many events as you like.
The app has beautiful calendars, home screen widgets, and reminders for your upcoming events. It also has a unique resizable list widget that displays all your important dates in one place right on your homescreen — you don’t have to open the app to see your upcoming events.
Plus, it gives you notifications of events after your phone calls. You can edit these events or add new ones right after your conversation.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between a countdown timer and a stopwatch?
While a countdown timer counts down from a set time and generates alerts when it reaches zero, a stopwatch counts upwards from zero and measures elapsed time.
Countdown Timer | Stopwatch |
Counts down from a set time to zero | Counts upwards from zero when you start it |
Equipped with alarms or notifications | Doesn’t have don’t have preset end times or built-in alarms |
Helps in allocating specific time blocks for tasks and activities | Tracks the time taken for tasks or events |
Commonly used for workouts and productivity techniques like the Pomodoro | Commonly used in sports events and science experiments |
What is the Pomodoro technique?
It’s a time management technique that involves breaking work into intervals (of 20 to 30 minutes) separated by short breaks. These frequent breaks keep your mind fresh and focused. However, this method is not suitable for everyone, especially for people who are extremely passionate about their work.
What is the best timer app?
While there are thousands of timer applications available for Android and iPhone users, Interval Timer and Timer+ have received excellent reviews from hundreds of thousands of users. They are perfect for multi-taskers and busy people.
What unique features set certain countdown apps apart from the rest?
Countdown tools often have unique features that distinguish them from one another. To find the perfect app for your specific requirements, paying attention to these distinguishing features is key.
- Themes and visual customization options such as colors, fonts, and background images
- Interactive widgets allow you to place countdowns on your device’s home screen
- The ability to link events to specific tasks, projects, or to-do lists.
- Social sharing and integration with other apps
- Support for multiple simultaneous countdowns
- Location-based alerts
- Voice commands and voice assistance
- The ability to set up recurring events, like daily workouts and weekly meetings
- Import events from social media platforms and third-party apps
- Backup and sync across devices
What are the benefits of using a countdown timer for productivity and time management?
A countdown timer offers several significant benefits —
- It enhances productivity by creating a sense of urgency and focus
- It helps you allocate time efficiently
- It provides constant time awareness
- It serves as a psychological tool against procrastination
- It encourages you to focus on one task at a time
Many apps have customization options, allowing you to tailor the timer to your specific requirements. You can select the duration, visual cues, and sound, making it a personalized tool for your productivity goals.
Is there an app with multiple timers?
Yes, there are numerous apps that allow you to manage multiple timers from a single dashboard. MultiTimer, for example, combines countdown and stopwatch timers with a very elegant user interface and powerful features. It allows you to create and customize different timers by adding names, icons, colors, and sounds.
Why you can trust us?
We tested 32 countdown applications for both Android and iOS. It took more than 15 hours to perform the test on different devices. Finally, we shortlisted the 17 best apps based on their interface, performance, and user reviews.
Our data is sourced from the developer’s website, PlayStore, AppStore, and other trusted sources, ensuring the utmost accuracy and credibility in our selection process.
We DO NOT accept paid articles or earn commission from any of the featured apps. Moreover, we have two separate reviewers who have no influence over our listing criteria or recommendations.
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Hi, I think you missed another nice Countdown app called Pretty Progress
There is also “Moments Countdown” https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rpedigoni.momentsappv1
I love using days until https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.itomkinas.countdown
I’m so glad I found this article! I’ve been looking for a good countdown app for the new year and these suggestions are incredibly helpful. Can’t wait to try out a few and see which one works best for me. Thanks for sharing! ️