your timer says ten minutes left. it was done an hour ago.

why a Mac timer is wrong after sleep

most countdown apps work like a kitchen timer: they hold a number of seconds and take one off every second. while the Mac sleeps, nothing runs, so nothing gets taken off. you close the lid with twelve minutes left, open it forty minutes later, and there are still twelve minutes left. the app has no idea time passed. it is less a bug than a design that assumed the Mac would stay awake.

the other design stores the moment the timer is due, say 17:50, and shows you the difference between that and now. sleep does not touch it: when the Mac wakes, «now» has moved on and the difference is still right, or already zero. the fix for the first kind is to switch to the second kind.

what a Mac does while it sleeps, and why it wakes without you, is the same subsystem seen from the other side: why your Mac wakes up at night

is it the timer, or is it the Mac?

before changing apps, check the clock in the menu bar against your phone. if the Mac itself is behind after waking, the timer is the least of it: mail, calendar and every alarm are off by the same amount. this is what the Apple Community threads for this search describe: a MacBook that sleeps at 22:16, wakes at 09:00 and still believes it is 22:21. a timer on that Mac is wrong however well it was written.

the thread, with the fixes people tried and the one that held: Apple Community — clock stops on sleep, resumes on wake-up

a smaller drift you will also see

an app that is awake but idle is not left alone either. macOS puts it into App Nap and fires its timers less often, and even a timer with no tolerance is not promised the exact second. this costs seconds, not minutes, and only an app that counts ticks can accumulate it.

Apple's own guide for developers says the system regulates a napping app's cpu and reduces how often its timers fire: Energy Efficiency Guide for Mac Apps — App Nap

the built-in timer that survives sleep: Clock

macOS has had a Clock app since Ventura, and its timer is the second kind. set one and the Timers list shows the time it will end next to the ring, 17:50 rather than a number being counted down, and Apple's help page says in as many words that the timer continues if you open another app or if your Mac goes to sleep. on macOS 26.6.2, where this page was written, that is what the list shows.

1. open Clock. it is in Applications, or type its name into Spotlight. pick the Timers tab.
2. set the length, pick a sound if you want one, click Start. the timer shows the end time under the ring; that is the number sleep cannot move.
3. to see the countdown in the menu bar on macOS 26, open Control Center's settings: System Settings → Control Center → scroll to the modules and show Timer. if you have never seen a countdown next to the clock, it is switched off there.
4. close the lid. when you open it, the ring shows the true remainder, or the timer has already finished.

the Timer module is one of the things macOS 26 changed about the menu bar; the rest are here: what macOS 26 changed for menu bar apps

the sentence about sleep, and the note that several timers at once need macOS 14.2 or later: Apple Support — set timers in Clock on Mac

if the whole clock is behind after waking

then no timer will help until the clock is fixed. System Settings → General → Date & Time: turn «Set time and date automatically» off and on again; that is the toggle people in the thread reach for first. to see how far off you are without changing anything, run `sntp time.apple.com` in Terminal; it prints the offset in seconds, no password needed. this Mac printed +0.204 s, which is nothing. a Mac that prints hours has a clock problem, not a timer problem, and the thread's last resort was resetting NVRAM.

one more number: `pmset -g log | grep -E "Entering Sleep|Wake"` prints when the Mac went down and came back, to the second. subtract, and you know how long the nap was, which is how far a tick-counting timer will be behind.

if what you actually need is for the Mac not to sleep during the countdown at all, that is a different job: keep a MacBook awake with the lid closed

where Clock stops

for one countdown that has to be right when you come back, use Clock and stop reading. it ends where Clock ends: no work-rest cycle (the timer runs once and is done), no presets of your own beyond the round numbers and the recents, and a running timer cannot become a stopwatch, only be cancelled. if your day is four rounds of work and rest, each has to survive sleep, and Clock has nothing for the rounds.

how hop keeps the timer right after sleep

hop's timer stores the moment the countdown ends, the same way Clock does, and shows the difference from now. the Mac can sleep, the panel can close, and the time in the menu bar stays right when you come back. on top of that single countdown sit the things Clock does not have: work-rest cycles (25/5, 52/17, 90/15 or your own), presets for the lengths you use every day, and one tap that turns a running timer into a stopwatch. the cycles are built on the same timer and survive a sleeping Mac the same way.

what the timer module does beyond surviving sleep: cycles, presets, the stash for a second timer: timer and work-rest cycles

two things this page does not claim. it does not name which third-party timers count ticks and which pin the end. that has not been measured here, and an app that was wrong last year may be right now; watch the remainder after one nap and you have your answer. and it does not promise that the finishing sound reaches you while the Mac is asleep, for hop or for Clock: what you get on waking is a correct remainder or a finished timer, and that is the part this page is about.

when the timer is still wrong after all that

• the Mac never slept. a dark display is not a sleeping Mac, and a Mac kept awake by a download or a keep-awake tool keeps ticking timers correctly. `pmset -g log` shows «Entering Sleep state» only when it actually went down; no line, no nap, and the error is coming from somewhere else.
• the timer app was quit, not just hidden. an app that is not running shows nothing, right or wrong. check it is still in the menu bar after waking.
• the clock jumped, not the timer. a timer that pins its end moment is right relative to the Mac's clock; if the clock is wrong, the timer is wrong by the same amount and in the same direction. fix Date & Time first, then judge the timer.
• the timer is right and the alert is what you missed. a finished timer with the sound off, or with that app's notifications switched off in System Settings → Notifications, looks a lot like a timer that ran long.

the vpn that does not come back after the same nap is the other thing people notice on waking: reconnect a vpn that drops after sleep

and if the question was never «when does it end» but «how long did i work», that is a tracker, not a timer: time tracker that stays on this Mac

frequently asked questions

does the Mac clock app timer keep going when the Mac sleeps?

yes. Apple's help page says the timer continues if you open another app or if your Mac goes to sleep, and the Timers list shows the time it will end rather than a count. on waking, the remainder is right or the timer has finished.

why is my timer app behind after i close the lid?

because it counts seconds one at a time and nothing ran while the Mac slept. the remainder froze when the lid closed, so it is wrong by exactly the length of the nap. an app that stores the end moment does not have this problem.

how do i know how long my Mac was asleep?

run `pmset -g log | grep -E "Entering Sleep|Wake"` in Terminal. it prints the time it went down and the time it came back, to the second, with no password needed. the difference is how far a tick-counting timer will be behind.

my Mac shows the wrong time after sleep, not just the timer. what then?

that is the system clock, and every timer inherits it. System Settings → General → Date & Time, turn «Set time and date automatically» off and on. `sntp time.apple.com` shows the offset. if it keeps coming back, the Apple Community thread on this page ended at an NVRAM reset.

will the timer sound wake my Mac up?

this page does not claim that for any app. what Apple promises for Clock is that the timer continues, not that it wakes the machine. what you can rely on is the remainder being right when you wake it yourself.

does hop's timer lose time when the Mac sleeps?

no. it stores the moment the timer ends and shows the difference from now, so the Mac can sleep, the panel can close and the time in the menu bar stays right. the work-rest cycles survive sleep the same way. how other menu bar timers behave by name has not been measured here.

the tool behind this

done with timer

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