The best egg timer app: what to look for
Five things that separate a great egg timer app from a novelty
- A real alarm, not a notification. Kitchens are loud and phones sit on silent. If the app alerts with an ordinary notification, you'll miss it — and a missed minute is a different egg. The alarm must sound on the Lock Screen, in silent mode, with the app closed.
- Times per doneness and per appliance. Soft is 5:00 on the stove, 4:30 on induction, 8:00 in an egg cooker (from switch-on, including heat-up). An app that offers one number per doneness is guessing for two of your three appliances.
- Fine adjustability. Your eggs, pot and altitude are yours. You should be able to nudge any time in small steps and have the app remember it.
- Glanceability. A countdown you can see on the Lock Screen, in the Dynamic Island, or on your watch — without unlocking anything with wet hands.
- Privacy and honesty. An egg timer needs no account, no ads and no tracking. If it wants a subscription for boiling an egg, keep scrolling.
How Egg Timer measures up
| Criterion | Egg Timer |
|---|---|
| Real alarm on silent | Rings via the same iOS mechanism as the system timer — loud, on the Lock Screen, even in silent mode. An ordinary notification is available as an option. |
| Per-appliance times | Four doneness levels × three appliances: stove 5:00 / 7:00 / 10:00 / 13:00, induction 30 s less each, egg cooker 8:00 / 10:00 / 12:00 / 14:30 — all for a size-M egg straight from the fridge. |
| Adjustability | Every time adjustable in 15-second steps, from 2:00 to 30:00, separately per doneness and appliance (Pro). |
| Glanceability | Live Activity with Dynamic Island countdown, pause and resume from there, plus a full Apple Watch app. Haptic ticks through the last 10 seconds. |
| Privacy | No ads, no account, no analytics, no tracking; the timer works offline. Purchases run through Apple's payment system, with an anonymous RevenueCat entitlement check. |
| Accuracy | Wall-clock based — the countdown stays exact with the app closed and the phone locked. |
It also speaks 12 languages with an in-app switcher, and follows light and dark mode.
Where Egg Timer isn't for you
An honest comparison includes the limits. Egg Timer is iPhone and iPad only (plus Apple Watch) — there is no Android version — and it requires iOS 26, so older devices are out. The four preset doneness levels and all three appliances are free, but custom cook times are a paid upgrade: a one-time Pro purchase, with no subscription (leaving an optional tip also unlocks Pro).
If you're on Android, on an older iPhone, or just want to try the timings first, the free online egg timer runs in any browser with the same presets — with the honest caveat that a browser tab can only ring while it's open and audible.
What's free, what's paid — exactly
Free, forever: all four doneness levels, all three appliances, the real alarm, the Live Activity, and the Apple Watch app. No ads anywhere, no account ever, nothing tracked. The one-time Pro purchase adds custom cook times — every time adjustable in 15-second steps, per doneness and appliance — and that's the entire business model. No subscription, no locked basics.
That's the standard we'd suggest holding any egg timer app to, ours included: judge it by the checklist above, not by screenshots. The case for a dedicated egg timer is really the case for hearing your alarm and trusting your times — pick whichever app clears that bar. We built Egg Timer to clear it comfortably.
Hold it to the checklist
Egg Timer rings even on silent, knows stove, induction and egg cooker, runs on your Apple Watch — and tracks nothing. Free to use, one-time upgrade for custom times.
Coming soon to the App Store