How To Create a Countdown Timer Using Python?

In this article, we will see how to create a countdown timer using Python. The code will take input from the user regarding the length of the countdown in seconds. After that, a countdown will begin on the screen of the format ‘minutes: seconds’. We will use the time module here.

Approach

In this project, we will be using the time module and its sleep() function. Follow the below steps to create a countdown timer:

• Step 1: Import the time module.
• Step 2: Then ask the user to input the length of the countdown in seconds.
• Step 3: This value is sent as a parameter ‘t’ to the user-defined function countdown(). Any variable read using the input function is a string. So, convert this parameter to ‘int’ as it is of string type.
• Step 4: In this function, a while loop runs until time becomes 0.
• Step 5: Use divmod() to calculate the number of minutes and seconds. You can read more about it here.
• Step 6: Now print the minutes and seconds on the screen using the variable timeformat.
• Step 7: Using end = ‘\r’ we force the cursor to go back to the start of the screen (carriage return) so that the next line printed will overwrite the previous one.
• Step 8: The time.sleep() is used to make the code wait for one sec.
• Step 9: Now decrement time so that the while loop can converge.
• Step 10: After the completion of the loop, we will print “Fire in the hole” to signify the end of the countdown.

Below is the implementation of the above approach

Python3

# import the time module
import time

# define the countdown func.
def countdown(t):

    while t:
        mins, secs = divmod(t, 60)
        timer = '{:02d}:{:02d}'.format(mins, secs)
        print(timer, end="\r")
        time.sleep(1)
        t -= 1

    print('Fire in the hole!!')


# input time in seconds
t = input("Enter the time in seconds: ")

# function call
countdown(int(t))

Output: