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Comment by doodlesdev | Hacker News Reader

I don't get it, why do people use the "google timer" or any kind of online stopwatch, like, any modern desktop environment comes with a timer application, and it even works offline!!! I get using currency conversion (since that's data that changes) and a few other functions. But really, seriously, can someone explain to me what was the use-case for this?

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Consistency. It's in the same place and works the same way on every platform.

That makes sense, thank you. This reminds that most people don't really want "native" experiences on their devices, and mostly think about "consistency". I guess that's the same use case for using a shell to do basic chores.

Linux Mint (Cinnamon) does not come with a timer or stopwatch pre-installed. I didn't realize this until I needed a stopwatch a few weeks ago only to find nothing.

There are tray applets available for this, but none that combine both a timer and stopwatch, so you have to deal with two extra icons in your tray or just use Google.

KDE has one, but it's a confusing interface for non-power users, since you need to tell it what to do at the end. If it just defaulted to an alert, it would be perfect.

That's interesting considering GNOME (which Cinnamon is a fork of) has one by default, curious why they would remove such thing (or was it not there to begin with when they forked?)

I open my Windows 10 start menu, type in 'timer', and no results are found. Same for 'stopwatch'.

The google timer just worked.

Both 'timer' and 'stopwatch' suggest the Clock app to me in Windows 10. When I open it there is timer and stopwatch functionality available in the menus.

For me, when setting up a call with a large amount of people on a webex/zoom meeting - will throw a timer up on the browser and screen share. Folks know when we will start the meeting again. I'm sure there are ways to do it with PPT... but a web page timer is good enough.

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