Countdown start

PRO Countdown start lets Refresh Pilot begin refreshing later instead of right now — after a wait you choose ("in 10 minutes"), or at an exact date and time ("today at 14:00"). Set it, walk away, and refreshing starts by itself.

🕐 Now
you press "Schedule" → ⏳ Wait
the countdown runs → 🔄 Start refreshing
with your last settings

The timer counts down in the background — when it hits zero, a normal refresh job starts on that tab.

Where to find it

Click the Refresh Pilot icon and open the Timer tab. Countdown start is the first card. Flip its toggle on (it is off by default) and the two timing modes appear.

Two ways to set the wait

Duration — "start in X from now"

Three steppers: Hours / Minutes / Seconds. The default is 10 minutes (0h / 10m / 0s), and the total must be at least 1 second. Real-life example: a ticket sale opens "in about 15 minutes" — set 0h / 15m / 0s and go make coffee.

At date & time — "start exactly then"

A date-and-time picker instead of steppers. Pick the moment refreshing should begin — it must be in the future; a time that already passed won't be accepted. Example: an embassy releases appointment slots at 09:00 tomorrow — set tomorrow, 09:00.

Two things that trip people up

⚠️ The big Start button does NOT wait. Pressing the popup's main Start button always starts refreshing immediately, timer or no timer. To arm the delayed start, press the "Schedule" button inside this card. A small toast message reminds you of this in the popup.

ℹ️ It reuses your last-used settings. When the countdown fires, it starts a job with whatever interval and options you used the last time you pressed Start. So press Start once first (you can stop it right away) — that saves your settings for the timer to reuse.

Setting it up, step by step

Open the page you want refreshed and set up your interval (and monitor, if you want one) in the popup.
Press Start once so those settings are saved, then press Stop.
Open the Timer tab and switch Countdown start on.
Choose Duration or At date & time and set your moment.
Press the card's Schedule button. Done — you can close the popup.

While it's armed

The card shows a live status line — "Scheduled · starts <time> (in …)" — with a Clear button next to it. Press Clear at any time to cancel the countdown. When the timer fires, Refresh Pilot starts a normal refresh job on that tab (your PRO settings are re-checked at that moment), and everything works exactly as if you had pressed Start yourself.

The keyboard shortcut

There's a start countdown hotkey with no default key — you can assign one at chrome://extensions/shortcuts. Pressing it arms a countdown on the current tab using the last duration you used; if you've never used one, it falls back to 60 seconds. See Shortcuts, side panel & menu for all hotkeys.

Countdown start is a one-time delay. If you want refreshing to begin at the same time every week — say, every workday morning — use Weekly schedules instead.

💡 Next: make it recur — set up Weekly schedules that start (and stop) refreshing on the days and times you pick.