Time’s up for Google Search’s built-in timer

All the way back in 2013, Google released a nifty little attribute in its look for motor device that experienced absolutely nothing to do with lookup at all: a timer. All end users had to do was look for for everything like “14 moment timer” or “timer till 2pm” and Google would crank out a widget and start out the countdown instantly. People today have been previously shelling out loads of time on Google at that issue, it may possibly have nicely designed feeling to enable individuals preserve observe of it there. Perfectly, time looks to have stopped for the Google Look for timer, at minimum for now.

You can continue to give your phone a voice command (either via Research or Google Assistant) to established up a timer and it will do it. But getting into a textual content command on possibly cellular or desktop to established a timer just will never operate any more — end users are generally dealt with to YouTube results in its place.

A Hacker News user made point out of it right now, but it would seem SERoundTable caught wind of this change ten times ago as a result of the Deccan Herald. I only make note of this analysis thread just for the reason that it is fairly telling of the obsolescence of a Google Search-centered timer (or stopwatch, don’t neglect that it could count up as effectively!) because we have other techniques to get from nowhere close to our clock application to our clock application and promptly set it to rely in the direction of anywhere we want it to go.

Additional importantly these days, we want individuals timers (and the reminder they are supposed to stand for) to be obtainable where ever we want them. That’s been a obstacle when we have so quite a few equipment on so quite a few program platforms these times, but at the very least there is some hope that Google Assistant will be constructing bridges to cross the gaps before long. It might be coming in a Pixel Function Drop before long plenty of.

UPDATE: 2022/08/01 14:39 EST BY JULES WANG

Timer’s comin’ again

Google Search Liaison Danny Sullivan has been achieving out to men and women and media inquiring concerns about the problem on Twitter. Extended tale small: sure, the timer/stopwatch will be coming back again to Google Look for “pretty soon,” but no definite ETA.