How to add a countdown timer to an online meeting

Start with what you already have. If your meeting is one timed segment inside a standard scheduled call, the built-in timer is the shortest path and you can stop reading here.

The limits show up as soon as the meeting has a structure:

The fastest method needs nothing but the chat, and it is the one that survives everything else that happens in the meeting. Each participant opens the timer in their own browser, and every copy stays in sync because they all display the same room.

The steps:

1. ✓Create a room and add a timer for each agenda item — timers carry a name, a speaker, and notes, so the list reads as a running order rather than a stopwatch.
2. ✓Copy the room's viewer link. Every view is a link; the viewer is the clean countdown display.
3. ✓Paste it into the meeting chat. Participants open it beside the meeting window or on a second screen — phones included.
4. ✓Control the countdown from the controller view on any device. Nobody has to share a screen for the timer to be visible.

When you want the timer inside the meeting window itself, share it like any content: open the viewer fullscreen in a browser window and share that window.

The trade-off is the content slot. The moment someone shares slides, the timer is gone — which is usually when the speaker most needs to see it. Use screen sharing for a single timed segment; use the chat link when presenters will be sharing content of their own.

For town halls and live events, the timer can join the meeting as a video participant: OBS Studio renders the viewer as a browser source, its virtual camera becomes a webcam, and a second account joins the meeting using that camera. Pinned, the timer stays visible regardless of what is shared.

This is the heaviest setup — one machine running OBS plus a dedicated login — and it needs a rehearsal. Meeting clients do not always list a virtual camera in their device picker, particularly on macOS after an update, so start OBS and the virtual camera before the meeting client, check camera permissions, and confirm the feed before the day. Once the browser source is configured, all control still happens in the timer's own controller.

Two behaviors worth knowing before the rehearsal. Presenters who need their slides fullscreen can keep the timer in sight anyway: meeting clients show a small floating video window when their main window is minimized, and the timer participant's tile rides along in it. And if the timer's own preview looks mirrored on the machine that joined as the camera, leave it — clients mirror only your self-view, and every other participant sees the digits the right way round.

This is the part a built-in timer cannot reach. Link timers so the next item starts the moment the previous one ends, and the running order advances itself while you watch the meeting instead of the clock.

Wrap-up thresholds change the display's appearance as an item runs low, which prompts a speaker without anyone interrupting. For a discussion with no fixed end, a count-up timer lets elapsed time make the point on its own.

Messages cover the rest: a bold, colored, or flashing note appears next to the countdown on every open viewer — a wrap-up cue, a schedule change, a reminder — without touching the meeting audio.

For anything bigger than a stand-up, verify the displays before people join. The room's live connections view lists every device currently attached — the co-host's browser, the OBS machine, the meeting-room screen — so the room's owner can confirm each one is receiving without asking "can everyone see the timer?" on the call.