How to share a countdown that stays up to date

You post “267 days to go” for a wedding, and by tomorrow the picture is one day wrong. The countdown card maker offers three ways to share a countdown that stays true.

The card says the day it was counted on. The embedded image is recounted each time it loads. The calendar subscription is recomputed each time your calendar re-reads it.

Pick by where the countdown goes. A story or a chat takes the dated card; a blog or a signature takes the embedded image; a calendar takes the subscription.

Which way of sharing a countdown stays true?

All three do: the card as a dated snapshot, the embedded image and the calendar because they are counted again when they are read.

What does the countdown card say?

The card shows the days left in large figures, your headline from “What it stands for”, and the date with its weekday. Below come the span in months and days, “counted on” with that day’s date, and the whole weeks to go.

For a wedding on 12 June 2027, counted on 18 September 2026, that reads “8 months and 25 days” and “38 weeks to go”.

With seven days or fewer left, a “This week!” badge appears. On the day, the card reads 0 days and “It’s today!”. From the next day, the same date counts the days since it, with the next milestone.

“Frame” offers Landscape, 1200 × 630, the link preview, or Portrait, 1080 × 1350, the feed and the story. The site’s address and a QR code sit in the corner, and the code opens the empty form.

How does an embedded countdown keep counting?

The snippet under “Embed this” is an image whose address carries the date, the headline and the frame, but not the count. Each time a page loads it, the card is drawn for that day. The image links back to the countdown card maker.

An image has no reader’s calendar to ask, so it counts by the site’s day, which turns at midnight in Paris: 6 p.m. in New York in summer. Browsers may keep a copy until that midnight. After the date, the image counts the days since.

What does the calendar subscription add?

It puts three all-day entries in a calendar: “Wedding — 7 days to go”, “Wedding — the eve” and “Wedding — the day”. “Add to my calendar” downloads them once as an .ics file. “Subscribe (updates itself)” hands the address to your calendar instead.

The file suggests a daily re-read, through the refresh interval that RFC 7986 defines, and each reading is counted afresh. Its address carries the date and the headline, so anyone you send it to gets the same three entries.

Questions

Can I share a countdown on WhatsApp or Instagram?

Yes, as the downloaded card: a JPEG image you post or send like a photo. For a story or a feed post, pick the Portrait frame, 1080 × 1350, which the page labels “the feed and the story”.

Does the countdown include today?

No: it counts whole days between today and the date. On 18 September, a date of 23 September gives 5 days, and the date itself gives 0.

Can I put a countdown in an email signature?

The page lists a signature among the places for the “Embed this” snippet. The image is recounted each time it loads, so the number a reader sees depends on when their mail program loads it.

Is the date I type stored?

No: the card is drawn in the same response and nothing is kept. The embed and calendar addresses do carry the date and the headline, so anyone who has them can read both.

Sources and further reading

• RFC 5545, iCalendar — the standard behind the .ics file that “Add to my calendar” downloads.
• RFC 7986, new properties for iCalendar — the refresh interval, the polling interval a calendar file suggests to the calendar that subscribes to it.