Privacy Policy

The short version. The clocks and timers run entirely on your device and send nothing anywhere. A handful of preferences are saved in your own browser so the site opens the way you left it. The site carries advertising and basic analytics, both from Google, which do set their own cookies and are covered in sections 5 and 6.

1. Scope

This policy covers the website at onlineclock.net and its pages. It does not cover other websites you might reach from a link here — once you follow a link, that site's own policy applies.

2. Information Collected Directly

None is required to use the site. There is no account system, no registration and no login. You do not have to provide a name, an email address or anything else to open a clock, run a timer or set a countdown.

The only place you can volunteer personal information is the contact form, and even that is not transmitted by this site: the form composes a message and hands it to your own email application, so what you write goes directly from you to us without passing through the website. If you do email us, we keep the message for as long as needed to deal with it.

3. How the Tools Use Your Device

Every clock, timer, stopwatch and countdown reads your device's own system clock and time zone. Nothing about the time you see, the timers you set or the countdowns you create is sent to a server. This is also why the tools keep working when your connection drops.

Reading the time zone your browser reports is not the same as reading your location. The site does not request geolocation permission and does not ask for your position.

4. Local Storage on Your Device

Preferences are kept in your browser's local storage so the site opens the way you left it. These values never leave your device. This is the complete list of what is stored:

Key	What it holds	Set by
oc_theme	Light or dark dial	The theme toggle in the header
oc_24h	Whether the clock shows 12 or 24-hour time	The format toggle in the header
oc_alarm_time	The alarm time you last set	The alarm on the home page
oc_alarm_label	The label attached to that alarm	The alarm on the home page
oc_alarm_tune	The ringtone chosen for the alarm	The alarm on the home page
oc_alarm_repeat	Whether the alarm repeats daily	The alarm on the home page
oc_counter	The counter value, step, start, target and label	The counter page
oc_light	Night light colour, brightness and options	The night light page
oc_countdown	Your saved countdown target and its label	The countdown page

You can remove all of it at any time by clearing this site's data in your browser settings. The site will then behave as it does on a first visit. Private or incognito windows discard local storage automatically when the window closes, which is why settings do not persist there.

5. Analytics

The site uses Google Analytics to understand which pages are used and roughly where visitors come from. It records things like the pages viewed, the referring site, approximate location derived from IP address, and general device and browser characteristics. It is used in aggregate to decide what to build and fix; it is not used to identify individuals, and we do not attempt to combine it with anything else.

Google Analytics sets its own cookies. You can opt out across all sites using Google's browser add-on, or block the cookies through your browser or a content blocker. The tools on this site work normally if you do.

6. Advertising

The site carries advertising through Google AdSense, which is what pays for it. Google and its partners may use cookies and similar technologies to serve ads and to measure their performance, including in some cases ads based on your previous visits to this or other websites.

You can control personalised advertising in Google's own ad settings, and there are industry opt-out pages operated by the Network Advertising Initiative and the Digital Advertising Alliance. Opting out does not remove advertising; it makes what you see less targeted.

We do not give advertisers any information about you, because we do not have any to give.

7. Browser Permissions

Two optional permissions may be requested, always in response to something you clicked, and both can be refused without breaking anything:

Notifications — so an alarm, timer or countdown can raise a system notification when it finishes. Declining means you get the sound and an on-screen alert instead.
Screen wake lock — used only by the night light, to stop the display sleeping while it is in use. Declining means the device's own sleep settings apply.

Neither permission gives the site any information about you.

8. Audio Files

Alarm ringtones are audio files hosted on this site and fetched when you select or play one. Requesting them creates an ordinary server log entry in the same way as requesting any page. No audio is recorded and the microphone is never accessed.

9. Server Logs

Like nearly all websites, the hosting server records requests. A log line typically contains an IP address, a timestamp, the page requested, the referring page and the browser's user agent string. These are used for security and for diagnosing faults, and are retained for a limited period in line with the host's normal practice.

10. Sharing

We do not sell personal information and we do not share it with third parties for their own marketing. The only third parties involved are the service providers described above — Google for analytics and advertising, and the hosting provider — each acting in its documented role. Information may also be disclosed where the law requires it.

11. Retention

Local storage stays on your device until you clear it. Email correspondence is kept for as long as needed to handle the matter. Analytics data is retained according to the retention period configured in Google Analytics. Server logs are kept for a limited period by the host.

12. Security

The site is served over HTTPS, so traffic between your browser and the server is encrypted. Because the site holds no accounts and no personal databases, there is very little stored here that could be exposed. That is a deliberate design choice rather than an accident: the safest data is the data you never collect.

13. Children

The site is a general-audience utility and is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them. Nothing on the site asks a visitor for personal details. If you believe a child has sent us personal information through email, contact us and it will be deleted.

14. International Visitors

The site is used worldwide and may be served from infrastructure in various countries. Where you have rights under laws such as the GDPR in the European Economic Area and the UK, or the CCPA in California, those rights apply to whatever personal information exists — which, given that there is no account system, is generally limited to email correspondence and the analytics and advertising data held by Google.

For the data Google holds through analytics and advertising, Google's own privacy tools are the direct route, since it is Google rather than this site that holds it.

15. Your Choices

Practically, you can:

Clear this site's data in your browser to remove every stored preference.
Block cookies for this site, or use a content blocker, and continue to use every tool.
Opt out of personalised advertising through Google's ad settings or the industry opt-out pages.
Decline the notification and wake lock permissions; both are optional.
Use a private window, which discards all local storage when it closes.
Ask us, through the contact page, what correspondence we hold from you and request its deletion.

16. Changes to This Policy

If this policy changes, the revised version will be posted here with a new date at the top. Where a change is significant — a new third-party service, or a new category of stored information — it will be described rather than quietly absorbed into the text.

17. Contact

Questions about this policy, or requests about your information, go through the contact page. Choose the privacy topic so it is routed correctly.

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