Duration Converter — seconds, minutes, hours, ISO 8601 and HH:MM:SS

Real-world use cases

• Set a Kubernetes liveness probe timeout in the format it wants

  You want a probe to time out after 1 minute 30 seconds, but the field accepts either an integer number of seconds or, in newer chart values, an ISO 8601 duration. Type "1h30m" — wait, you meant 1m30s — type "1m30s" in auto mode, read the Seconds row (90) for the integer field, and copy the ISO 8601 row (PT1M30S) for the duration field. No more guessing whether the manifest wants 90, "90s", or "PT1M30S", and no off-by-a-factor-of-60 outages from pasting minutes where seconds were expected.

• Log a video clip length three different ways

  An editor cuts a clip and the NLE reports its length as the timecode 00:04:37. The CMS wants total seconds, the analytics event wants milliseconds, and the changelog reads better as "4m 37s". Paste "00:04:37" in auto mode: the Seconds row shows 277, the Milliseconds row shows 277000, and the Human-readable row shows "4m 37s". Copy each into the field that needs it instead of doing three mental conversions and fat-fingering one of them.

• Translate a subscription billing interval to seconds for a cache TTL

  Your billing period is "1 week" but the cache layer wants a TTL in seconds. Type 1, pick Weeks from the dropdown, and read the Seconds row: 604800. Copy it straight into the TTL config. Next sprint the plan changes to a 30-day billing cycle — type 30, pick Days, read 2592000. The exact second count for every common billing interval without opening a calculator app and multiplying by hand.

• Sanity-check a meeting length before sending the invite

  You blocked "90 minutes" for a workshop but the calendar UI shows the end time in hours and you want to confirm it's not eating into lunch. Type 90, pick Minutes: the Hours row reads 1.5 and the clock row reads 01:30:00. Now you know the block is exactly an hour and a half, and you can paste "1h 30m" into the invite description so attendees see a friendly length rather than a raw minute count.

• Convert an API rate-limit window from milliseconds to a readable string

  A third-party API documents its rate-limit reset window as 86400000 milliseconds and you need to put a human sentence in your error copy. Type 86400000, pick Milliseconds: the Days row reads 1 and the Human-readable row reads "1d". Now your error message can say "try again in 1 day" instead of echoing a raw millisecond count that no user will parse. Adjust precision to 0 places so the units stay clean in the output.

Common pitfalls

• Pasting "1h30m" while a fixed unit like Minutes is selected returns an error — the fixed-unit modes only accept a plain number. Either switch the dropdown to Auto for expressions, or type a bare number when a unit is selected. The error message says exactly this, but it trips people who leave the dropdown on a unit from a previous conversion.

• Confusing the ISO 8601 duration (PT1H30M, a length) with an ISO 8601 timestamp (2026-05-29T08:00:00Z, a moment). This tool only does durations. If you paste a full timestamp it won't parse — that's a job for the timestamp-converter. The giveaway: durations start with P, timestamps start with a year.

• Expecting 'P1M' to mean one minute. In ISO 8601, an M before the T is months (a calendar unit this tool rejects); the M for minutes comes after the T, as in PT1M. Write minute durations as PT…M, never P…M. The parser rejects the date-M form on purpose rather than silently guessing.

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