Birthday Countdown_

Type the person's name in the Create a countdown box, pick the date and press Generate share link. You immediately get a unique URL like ?name=Sarah&date=2026-08-12. Copy it and send it by message, email or chat — when they open the link the countdown starts ticking straight away.

No. There is nothing to sign up for, nothing to install and no email address to hand over. The whole countdown runs inside the web page you are already looking at, on desktop, tablet and phone.

Yes, and it is the easiest way to do it. Enter the real date of birth and leave Repeat every year ticked. The countdown rolls forward to the next birthday on its own and works out which age is coming up, so the display reads “turning 30”. Next year the same link keeps working and counts down to the following birthday.

Yes. Fill in the optional Time field and the countdown targets that exact moment — useful for a party that starts at 20:00, or for midnight on the day itself. Leave it at 00:00 and the countdown ends at midnight at the start of the birthday.

With Repeat every year ticked, the countdown automatically jumps to next year's birthday, so a link you made in January still works in December. Untick it if you want a strict one-off date that should not roll over.

Yes. Untick Repeat every year and it becomes a plain countdown to any date and time — a wedding, a holiday, a product launch, a retirement, an exam, a due date, New Year's Eve. Leave the name blank and the display simply reads “The Big Day”.

As far as you like. The day counter grows to four digits automatically, so countdowns of several years — well past 1,000 days — display correctly.

Ten, and they are genuinely different rather than recolours of the same clock: Flip Board (a retro split-flap departures board), Neon Balloons (floating balloons behind a frosted glass card), Cosmic (a parallax starfield with a ringed planet and shooting stars), Aurora (a slow animated gradient mesh), Cake Candles (candles whose wax melts down as the clock runs), Vegas Marquee (a bulb-lit theatre sign with chasing lights), Terminal Boot (a green CRT terminal), VHS Synthwave (an 80s neon grid and sunset), Arcade 8-bit (a pixel cabinet) and Matrix Rain (falling digital rain).

Click any theme in the Theme grid, press T to cycle through them one at a time, or press R for a random one. The switch is instant — the countdown keeps running and never restarts.

Yes. Your chosen theme and colour are both stored in the link, so whoever opens it sees exactly the version you built. They can still change it on their own screen if they prefer a different look; it will not affect your copy.

There are nine preset accent colours plus a full custom colour picker. Press 1 to 9 to switch instantly, which also works in fullscreen. Every theme picks the colour up — glows, digits, highlights and the share card image all follow it.

Flip Board, Vegas Marquee and Matrix Rain read best from across a room because the digits are heavy and high contrast. Aurora and Cosmic are the calmest choices for a screen that will be left running for hours. Every theme is sized in viewport units, so all ten scale cleanly to a 4K screen without becoming pixellated.

Yes. The layout reflows to a single column on small screens, the themes scale down, and you can use the native share sheet to send the link straight to WhatsApp, Messages or anywhere else. Fullscreen works on most mobile browsers too.

Yes. Press the speaker button on the countdown or the S key to switch it on. You then get a soft tick every second, a rising beep for each of the final ten seconds, and a full Happy Birthday fanfare with a party horn and popping bursts at zero.

Browsers deliberately block audio until you interact with a page, which stops websites blaring at you unexpectedly. The countdown respects that: sound stays off until you switch it on. It is also the polite default if the countdown is going to sit on a screen all day.

Yes, your choice is remembered in your own browser, so the next countdown you open starts with sound already enabled. Turn it off the same way, with the speaker button or the S key.

No. Every sound — the tick, the beeps, the horn and the melody — is generated live in your browser using the Web Audio API. There are no audio files to load, so nothing slows the page down and nothing is fetched from a third party.

Copy the link with the copy button or the C key, or use one of the one-tap buttons for WhatsApp, Telegram, X, Facebook or email. On a phone the Share… button opens your device's native share sheet so you can send it to any app you have installed.

It encodes the countdown link, so anyone can point a phone camera at it and open the countdown on their own device. Press Q to park it in the corner of the screen — handy at a party, where guests can scan the code off the TV and take the countdown home with them. The QR code is also printed on the downloadable share card.

Yes. Add to calendar downloads a standard .ics file that works with Apple Calendar, Google Calendar, Outlook and anything else that reads calendar invites. If Repeat every year is ticked, the event is created as a yearly recurring reminder, so you never miss it again.

Yes. Download card generates a 1200×630 PNG showing the name, the date, how many days are left and a scannable QR code, in whatever accent colour you picked. It is exactly the right size to post on social media or drop into a group chat.

Yes. Add &embed=1 to any countdown link and the page strips back to just the countdown itself, with no header, controls or footer — ready to drop into an iframe:
<iframe src="https://jasperbernaers.com/birthday-countdown/?name=Sarah&date=2026-08-12&theme=aurora&embed=1" width="100%" height="420" style="border:0" allow="fullscreen"></iframe>
The Embed button in the share row copies that snippet for you.

No. There is no server, no database and no record to delete, so the link keeps working for as long as the page exists. Bookmark it and it will still be counting down next year.

The link itself is the countdown, so editing means generating a new link with the new details and sending that instead. Anyone still holding the old link keeps seeing the old version — nothing you do can change what is already on someone else's screen.

The clock lands on all zeros, the screen flashes white, and the page bursts into full-screen confetti and fireworks behind a big animated “Happy Birthday” message. If sound is switched on you also get the fanfare. It works in fullscreen too, so it is designed to be the centrepiece on a party screen.

Yes — press Preview the finale in the Display panel and the full confetti, fireworks and fanfare sequence plays immediately. Closing it puts the countdown straight back to where it was, so you can safely test it on the projector the night before.

The confetti keeps falling until you close the celebration, and the countdown stays in party mode for the rest of the day. You can set the whole thing off again at any time with the More confetti button.

No. The name, date, theme and colour live in the URL itself and nowhere else. Nothing is written to a server, there are no accounts, no cookies for the countdown, and no record anywhere of who you are making countdowns for. If you never share the link, nobody else can ever see it.

Yes, completely free. No account, no subscription, no trial, no watermark and no ads. It is one of a large collection of free browser-based tools at jasperbernaers.com.

The date and time you pick are read in the local time zone of whoever opens the link. That means a friend abroad sees the countdown hit zero at their own local midnight rather than yours, which is usually what you want for a birthday. For an event that must happen at one exact global moment, set an explicit time and tell people which time zone it refers to.

Once the page has loaded it keeps counting without a connection, because all the logic runs in your browser. You do need to be online for the first load, and for the web fonts to arrive.

Any current browser — Chrome, Edge, Safari, Firefox, Brave and Opera, on Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS and Android. Fullscreen, sound, the QR code and the downloadable card all rely on standard browser features rather than plugins.

F fullscreen, ESC exit, T next theme, R random theme, S sound on or off, Q show or hide the QR code, C copy the share link, and 1–9 to change the accent colour. They all work in fullscreen as well.

Every control is a real button reachable by keyboard, the countdown is driven by the shortcuts above, and motion-heavy effects are reduced automatically if your system is set to prefer reduced motion.

It is built and maintained by Jasper Bernaers alongside a collection of other free browser tools. Problems, ideas and requests are welcome via the about page.