Untimer is a focus timer that shows you the time passing. Press and hold the glass to wind it, let go, and twenty five minutes begin. When they end, you see what happened and take a break.
The timer and your days are free. Plus is $1.99 a month or $19 a year for the rest of Insights and the whole milestone ladder. It works in any browser and fits in a narrow window beside your work.
Try it. Press and hold the glass.
Press and hold the glass to wind it. Let go at the stop, and twenty five minutes begin.
This one runs in your browser. The real timer app is here, and it is free.
What is different
If you put things off, the hardest moment is the one before you begin. So beginning is the only thing here that takes an act. You press the glass, hold it for two and a half seconds, and letting go starts the session. Clicking does nothing.
Are you an Untimer?
Many people with ADHD describe a weak sense of time passing. An hour goes by and nothing inside them said so. Research has measured real differences in how they perceive time, and plenty of people without a diagnosis know the feeling too: the phone takes an hour, the tab takes an hour, and the day is gone.
Some Untimers have a diagnosis and most do not. Nobody is asked, and nobody is told they are one. If this sounds like you, the word is yours.
More about UntimersHow a session goes
At rest the glass has run out. Press and hold it and the sand rises back up, against a spring that clicks as it goes, for two and a half seconds. Let go at the stop and the session starts.
Every session is twenty five minutes. The peach runs down into sage, thick and slow, and bubbles rise out of the neck.
If something pulls you away, one tap records it, and one line says what it was. The box at the top of the timer hands that line back when you come back.
When the sand runs out, the box under the heading says what happened, and the screen does not go anywhere. A small figure beside the time says where you are in the set. If you stop it instead, nothing is said and nothing is counted.
The glass is replaced by a calm scene to look at. You start the break when you are ready, or go straight back to focusing. After four sessions you get a long break.
Why each part is there
Most of the ideas in it come from research on attention, habits and interruptions. A lot of that research is about people with ADHD, people who cannot stop scrolling, and people who put things off. Here is what each part does, and why it is there.
You press and hold the glass for two and a half seconds to start a session.
Why. A real timer has to be wound, and that small act gives it weight. We built the same thing into a digital timer, so starting is something you do on purpose instead of something you click while you are still deciding. Two and a half seconds is long enough to notice that you have begun.
Every session is the same length. There is no setting to change it.
Why. Research on fixed focus and break schedules found that people got the same amount done with or without a fixed schedule, but felt more concentrated and less tired with one (Biwer and colleagues, 2023). The exact number did not matter. So Untimer keeps one number and takes that decision off your plate.
The sand moves, the tab counts down, and today is drawn as a day with your sessions on it.
Why. Many people with ADHD describe a weak sense of time passing, and research has measured real differences in how they perceive time. That is what an external timer is for. In one study, a visible countdown made children, and especially those with more attention difficulties, less anxious about the time ahead and kept them on task more.
One tap records an interruption, and one line records what it was.
Why. Part of your attention stays on a task you left unfinished (Leroy, 2009). Writing a short plan for where you stopped reduced that, and people did better on the next task (Leroy and Glomb, 2018). Untimer asks for that line at the moment you leave, and the box at the top of the timer hands it back when you come back.
The glass gives way to a calm scene in the same place. The break never starts by itself.
Why. Breaks help people feel less tired, and longer breaks help more after hard work. The worst break is a phone break. In a study of several hundred people, a break spent on the phone left people as drained as taking no break at all (Kang and Kurtzberg, 2019). The break gives you something to rest your eyes on that is not a feed.
Every session keeps how long you planned, how long you worked, how it ended, and the task it went to.
Why. Keeping track of what you do is one of the most effective habit techniques there is, and it works best when you can see the record and look back at what you intended (Michie and colleagues, 2009). Untimer records every session, shows it to you, and keeps it.
Untimer shows how many of the last forty five days you came back. A missed day looks like any other.
Why. Habits take anywhere from a few weeks to most of a year to form, and missing one day makes little difference (Lally and colleagues, 2010). A streak that resets punishes you for something that does not matter.
Ladders with levels, for time recorded, coming back, how you work, and craft.
Why. A goal that is months away pulls weakly, and studies of ADHD suggest that pull is weaker still. That is part of why someone who cannot start a report can play a game for hours: the game tells you how you are doing every few seconds. Milestones give you something close at hand. They tell you what you did, and they never take anything away. Rewards that pay you for an activity wear down your own interest in it (Deci, Koestner and Ryan, 1999). Information does not.
You can set a time your working day ends, and it is marked on the day.
Why. Stopping is as hard as starting for a lot of Untimers. Once the work has you, it keeps you. A set end to the day gives you a line to stop at, drawn where you can see it all day.
You can make a task with a name and a guess at how many sessions it will take, and your sessions register against it. You never have to.
Why. A specific plan for what you will do helps people start (Gollwitzer and Sheeran, 2006). A required task field stops people starting at all. In the founder’s own record of thousands of sessions, almost none had one. So Untimer asks, and never insists. When you finish a task, it keeps what it took against what you said.
No notes, no calendar, no settings to bury you.
Why. Every choice placed between you and starting is a place to stall. Untimer is your external timer. It keeps your record, and leaves the rest to the tools you already use.
Your session stays put
The timer lives on the server. It stores the moment your session ends, and every screen just shows how far away that moment is.
So a refresh changes nothing, a crashed tab changes nothing, and a laptop that went to sleep wakes up with the right time. Your phone and your computer always show the same session, because there can only be one.
When the session ends, a soft bell rings at the exact second, with the tab in the background too. A page reloaded mid session and never touched after cannot ring, because a browser will not make a sound nobody asked for. For that one moment Untimer can show a system notice instead, once you have allowed it from Settings.
How it is builtThe day
At the bottom of the Timer, and at the top of every day in Insights, today is a drawing. Midnight to midnight, with the night in slate at both ends, the morning rising through peach, the working day in pale sage and the evening going down through sage, and the sun where you are right now.
It is the picture the founder looks at most. It says where the day has gone and how much of it is left, without a number on it, and it is the same drawing on the phone.
Your records
Each session keeps how long you planned, how long you worked, how it ended, the interruptions you noticed, and the task it went to.
Your days
Free
One small hourglass is one session that ran its length, and it is the same mark everywhere a session is drawn. Open a day and it is drawn as a day, with every session under it. Your days are free, and every session is kept.
Coming back
Free
This is how often you came back. The days you missed are drawn like the days you did.
The year
Plus
One dot a day, shaded by how many sessions ran. A quiet week is simply quiet.
Milestones
Ladders with levels, in four groups: time recorded, coming back, how you work, and craft. Each one shows the level you reached and what is next. Others only appear once they happen. You keep every one of them.
There are no points. Every milestone you reach is yours whether or not you have Plus; Plus shows the rungs still ahead of you. More about Plus, and why the ladder is built this way.
Beside your work
Every screen works down to 380 pixels wide, with the navigation along the bottom, so Untimer stands at the edge of the screen like a timer on a desk, beside the work it is timing.
It is simple on purpose. There is nothing to configure and no settings screen to lose an afternoon in, so what is left is what matters: your tasks, and your time. You wind the glass, you work, and the timer keeps the time at the edge of the screen.
Price
The timer is free, and so are your days. Plus adds the rest of Insights and the whole milestone ladder.
Free
$0
Plus
The rest of both$1.99 a month
or $19 a year, paid once
Android
It runs on the same account as the web app, so the session you start at your desk is the one on your phone, and the one you start on your phone carries on at the desk. That makes the phone the timer for the work that is not at a computer: cleaning a room, sorting out the garage, anything that needs twenty five minutes of the same kind of attention.
Wind it, put the phone in your pocket, and the notification says when the sand has run out. The countdown sits on the lock screen and in the status bar, drawn by the system itself, and an alarm sounds at the end, asleep or not. Stop it at your desk and the phone asks before it rings, and stays quiet.
It goes on Google Play when it is ready. Until then, the web app works in a phone browser.
Articles
Untimer cuts a working day into pieces of twenty five minutes that are all the same size. Here is what changes when you count your day in pieces instead of guessing at it in hours.
Read it5 minute readMost of what gets called procrastination is a starting problem. Untimer makes the start small, deliberate and cheap to walk away from, and here is why each of those matters.
Read it6 minute readRefresh the page and most browser timers forget you. Untimer does not, because nothing in it counts down. A session is one moment on a server, and every screen shows how far away it is.
Read itQuestions
You can register for free and use the timer, and it keeps your days. Free also shows how often you come back, and every milestone you reach stays yours. Plus is $1.99 a month or $19 a year, and it adds the rest of Insights and the whole milestone ladder. There are no ads and no trackers, and you can download everything you recorded as one file at any time.
Eight more readings in Insights: what your time went to, the hours and the weekdays you focus most, your record so far, your best day, week and month, when your days usually begin and end, what pulled at you, and a year of your days in one drawing. And the whole milestone ladder, with how far along each rung you are. Everything you record is free either way.
No. A session is twenty five minutes, a break is five, a long break is twenty five and a set is four, and none of them can be changed. End the break stops a break early whenever you have had enough. The one thing you set is when your working day ends.
Winding is how you begin. You hold the glass for two and a half seconds and let go, and that small effort is the point. If you use switch access, voice control or a screen reader, there is an action that winds the glass for you.
It says one thing at a time. What just happened comes first, while it lasts. Then where you left off, if you wrote a line at an interruption and have not read it back yet. Then a tip about the timer, a line worth reading, or a fact about your own day, dealt in turn. The arrow shows the next one, and the cross puts away what can be put away.
Untimer is a timer. Many Untimers have trouble feeling time pass, starting, or stopping, with or without a diagnosis, and Untimer is designed with that in mind. It does not diagnose or treat anything.
In a database in Ireland, and only your account can read it. Your sessions, your notes, your tasks and your marks are what is stored, and nothing about how you behave. From Settings you can download everything as one file, or delete your account and everything in it. There are no analytics scripts on this site or in the app.
Android is coming, and it is built. Until it is on Google Play the web app works in a phone browser, and you can add it to your home screen.
An email and a password. Plus is $1.99 a month or $19 a year when you want it.
