Countdown Timers, Units and Rounding

Counter mode

The “Counter mode” option allows the countdown timers can be set to display multiple units (“Break Down”) or a single value (“Total”). The explanations and examples below are for the “Break Down” mode, but the same also applies to the “Total” option.

Smallest unit

The smallest unit (or only unit if Counter mode is “Total”) is set here. Rounding only applies if this is set to anything other than “milliseconds”.

Rounding

This option controls if the numbers should be rounded up or down or the system should deal with it automatically. Only the smallest number will be rounded up or down (although that can propagate into the higher units as well).

Except for “smallest unit” set to milliseconds, there will always be some smaller unit that is not displayed.

Day rounding example

Suppose you are making a countdown timer to a date in the future, showing only the days (days being the smallest unit). If it is currently 16:30 (4:30pm) and you are counting down to midnight (00:00), what will you expect the counter to display? 1 day left or 0 days left? It is only 7.5 hours until the date – so should you round those hours up to 1 day or down to 0 days?

Since both results can be valid, depending on how you are counting, the counter supplies several options for rounding, two being “Round up” (showing 1 day) and “Round down” (showing 0 days).

Note that when the clock gets exactly to midnight and past that, both will show “0 days” and they will both show “1 day” 24 hours later (1 day after the time you counted down to). If “Automatic” is chosen, it will default to rounding up for “day” as smallest unit.

Hours and minutes rounding

If you are counting down from 16:30 (4:30pm) to midnight, and it is showing “hours” as smallest units, then both rounding up and down will show 0 days. However, for the hours, rounding up will show 8 hours and rounding down will show 7 hours. Note that with rounding up, it will still show 1 hour until the second before midnight has ended. If you are rounding up and selecting minutes, it will still show 1 minute until midnight is reached. If “Automatic” is chosen, it will default to rounding down for hours and minutes.

Seconds rounding

If seconds are rounded down, they will show 0 during the last second before midnight (and stay on 0 the first second after midnight). If seconds are rounded up, it will show 1 during the last second before midnight, first showing 0 as midnight is approached. If you choose to count down seconds with your counter, you will get the best result with “Rounding up”, saying the number 1 exactly when it is 1 second left. If “Automatic” is chosen, it will default to rounding up for hours and minutes.

Example table – rounding down.

Bold text: figures that are different from the next table because of different rounding.

The symbol “+” means that the texts for when time has passed will be displayed instead, and the counter is currently counting upwards. The + will not be displayed on the countdown timer itself.

Example table – rounding up.

Bold text: figures that are different from the previous table because of different rounding.