Press and hold the hourglass for two and a half seconds, then let go, and a twenty five minute session starts. The countdown shows in the hourglass, in a readout and in the browser tab title. A bell sounds when the session ends, and a five minute break starts when you press its button.
The timer, your sessions and the data export are free. Untimer runs in a web browser, and an Android app is coming. It fits in a narrow window beside the work it is timing.
Try it here
Press and hold the hourglass to wind it up. Let go at the stop, and twenty five minutes begin.
Winding it up is built on the research into why starting is the hard part, and it is there to give your decision weight. Pressing a button is free, so it carries no weight. Two and a half seconds of holding costs you something, and by the time you let go you have already begun.
This hourglass runs a twenty five minute session in your browser. In the app it comes with tasks and interruptions, and the app also has the day strip, Insights and Milestones.
Who it is for
Why each part is there
Untimer looks like one timer on one screen. Behind it sits the research on how attention, habits and interruptions behave, and every part of the product is built on it.
The Timer screen has the hourglass and the time, with the set figure beside it. Under them are the Focus, Break and Long break selector and the sessions of the day. The current task comes next, and the day strip runs along the bottom. There is one length of session, one length of break and one set of four, and you set none of them.
Each of those choices is based on something that was measured. The cards below say what each part does and why it is there, and they name the studies by author and year.
You press and hold the hourglass for two and a half seconds and let go. That winds it up and starts the session.
Why. A mechanical timer has to be wound up, and that small act gives it weight. Untimer builds the same act into a digital timer, so starting becomes something you decide to do instead of something you click while you are still deciding. Two and a half seconds is long enough to notice that you have begun.
A session is twenty five minutes, a break is five minutes and a long break is twenty five minutes. Four sessions make a set.
Why. In a study of students, those who followed a fixed schedule of focus and breaks reported higher concentration and motivation and lower fatigue and distraction (Biwer and colleagues, 2023). The structure is what made the difference. So Untimer keeps one number for each length and makes that decision for you, and you start instead of arranging a schedule first.
Sand falls through the hourglass while the session runs, a readout counts down beneath it, and the minutes left show in the browser tab title. You can look at something else and still know how much time is left. The day strip draws today 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 a study of children, a visible countdown reduced anxiety about the time ahead and off task behaviour, and the benefit was largest for the children with the most trouble paying attention (Hallez and Vallier, 2025).
When something pulls you away you tap Interruption, choose Something in my head or Something around me, and write one line about what it was if you want to.
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 message box hands it back when you return, which brings you back to the work.
After a session the hourglass is replaced by a calm scene: a figure at a window for a five minute break and a bench under a tree for a long break. The break waits for you and starts when you press its button.
Why. Breaks help people feel less tired, and longer breaks help more after hard work. The long break is twenty five minutes, long enough to recover. In a study of several hundred people, a break spent on a phone left them as drained as taking no break at all (Kang and Kurtzberg, 2019). Untimer gives you a quiet scene to rest your eyes on instead.
Every session keeps how long you planned and how long you worked. It also keeps how the session ended and the task it went to.
Why. Keeping track of what you do is one of the most effective habit techniques, 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, keeps it and shows it to you in Insights, which also compares each task with your estimate.
Active days counts the days with a session over the last forty five days, in a row or not. It also shows your current run of days and your longest run.
Why. Habits take anywhere from a few weeks to most of a year to form. In a study of habit formation, missing a single day made little difference to how well a habit formed (Lally and colleagues, 2010). So Active days counts the days you came back over the last forty five, and you can walk back in after a bad week and pick up where you were. A counter that resets to zero would punish you for something that barely matters.
There are fifty four milestones in four groups: Time recorded, Days, Patterns, and Tasks and breaks. Most of them have levels.
Why. Rewards that are further away pull less, and studies of ADHD find that they pull less still (Jackson and MacKillop, 2016; Patros and colleagues, 2016). That is part of why someone who struggles to start a report can play a game for hours: the game tells you how you are doing every few seconds. Milestones give you feedback much closer to the work than a goal that is months away. They tell you what you did, and every milestone you reach is kept. With Plus each milestone shows its next level and how far along you are, which puts a goal within reach of the next session, and a count that moves with every session shows that the work is adding up. In a review of the research on rewards, payment for an activity lowered interest in the activity itself (Deci, Koestner and Ryan, 1999). Plain information about your own work leaves that interest alone, and milestones report what you did.
In Settings you can set the time your working day ends, and the day strip marks it with a dashed line and a flag.
Why. Stopping is as hard as starting for many people. Once you are absorbed in the work, it is hard to leave it. A set end to the day gives you a line to stop at, drawn on the day strip.
You can name a task and guess how many sessions it will take. Your sessions count against it, and Insights compares your guess with what it took. A session can also start without a task.
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 carried a task. So a task is optional, and Untimer lets you get on with the session. When you finish a task, it keeps what it took against what you said, so your estimates improve.
Untimer holds the timer, your tasks and your sessions. It sets the lengths for you, and Settings has only a few choices.
Why. Every choice placed between you and starting is a place to stall. Untimer holds the time for you and keeps your sessions, and it works beside the tools you already use.
How a session goes
At rest, all the sand is in the lower chamber. Press and hold the hourglass and the sand rises back up against a spring that clicks as it winds. Hold for two and a half seconds, then let go. The session starts when you let go.
Every session runs twenty five minutes. The sand in the upper chamber is peach, which shows the time left. It falls into the lower chamber and turns sage, which shows the time used. Bubbles rise out of the neck as it falls.
If something pulls you away, tap Interruption and write one line about what it was. The message box shows that line when you come back.
A bell sounds, a calm break scene takes the hourglass's place and the message box says what happened. The screen stays where it is. A small figure beside the time shows where you are in the set. If you stop the session early, the message box stays quiet and the session is saved without adding to the day.
The break waits until you are ready. A five minute break starts when you press Start the break, or you can press Focus to go straight back to the hourglass. After four sessions you get a twenty five minute long break.
Tabs and devices
The server stores the time your session ends, and every screen shows how far away that time is.
A refresh, a crashed tab and a laptop that went to sleep all show the right time left. Your phone and your computer show the same session, because the session lives on the server.
A bell sounds at the exact second the session ends, also when the tab is in the background. After a page reload a browser plays sound only once you have touched the page. Until then Untimer can show a system notice instead, once you have allowed it in Settings.
How it is builtThe day strip
At the bottom of the Timer screen, and at the top of each day in Insights, the day is drawn as a strip from midnight to midnight. Night is slate grey at both ends, the morning is peach, the middle of the day is pale sage and the evening is sage. A small sun shows the time now.
The strip shows when you worked and how much of the day is left, without a single number. It is the picture the founder looks at most. The Android app draws the same strip.
Insights
Each session keeps how long you planned and how long you worked. It also keeps how the session ended, the interruptions you noticed and the task it went to.
Days
Free
Each small hourglass is one session that ran its full length, and it is the same symbol wherever a session is drawn. Open a day to see its strip and every session on it. The Days list is free and keeps every session.
Active days
Free
Active days shows how often you came back. It counts the days with a session over the last forty five days, and it also shows your current run of days and your longest run. A missed day is drawn like any other day.
The year
Plus
Each square is one day, and it is darker the more sessions ran on it.
Milestones
The groups are Time recorded, Days, Patterns, and Tasks and breaks. Most of them have levels, such as ten, a hundred and a thousand sessions. Each one also has its own emblem. Some milestones appear only once you have earned them. You keep every milestone you reach, and reaching one is free. Plus also shows the levels still ahead and how far along each one is.
Read more about Plus or about the research behind milestones.
Narrow windows
Every screen works down to 380 pixels wide, with the navigation along the bottom. You can keep Untimer in a narrow window at the edge of your screen while you work in another window. You wind the hourglass up, you work, and the timer keeps the time beside the work.
Price
The timer, your sessions and every milestone you reach are free. Plus adds eight more panels in Insights and shows the next level of each milestone and how far along you are.
Free
$0
Plus
Insights and Milestones$1.99 a month
or $19 a year, paid once
Android
It uses the same account as the web app, so a session you start at your desk is on your phone, and a session you start on your phone is at your desk. That makes the phone the timer for work away from a computer, such as cleaning a room or sorting out the garage, or anything that needs twenty five minutes of the same kind of attention.
Wind it up and put the phone in your pocket. A notification shows the countdown and tells you when the sand has run out. The countdown also shows on the lock screen and in the status bar, drawn by Android itself. An alarm sounds at the end whether the phone is asleep or awake, and a session you stopped at your desk is skipped.
It goes on Google Play when it is ready. Until then, the web app works in a phone browser.
Articles
The articles explain how Untimer works and the research behind it.
Untimer counts a day in sessions of twenty five minutes that are all the same size. This is what a session records, how the day is drawn and what changes when a day is counted in sessions instead of guessed at in hours.
Read the article5 minute readMost of what gets called procrastination is a starting problem. Untimer makes the start small, gives it weight with a hold of the hourglass and makes it cheap to walk away from, and here is why each of those matters.
Read the article7 minute readRefresh the page and most browser timers forget the session. Untimer stores each session on the server as an end time. A refresh, a closed tab, a sleeping laptop or a second device all show the same session.
Read the articleQuestions
You can register for free. The timer, your sessions and Active days are free. So are the data export and every milestone you reach. Plus is $1.99 a month or $19 a year, and it adds eight more panels in Insights and shows the next level of each milestone with how far along you are. Untimer carries no ads and runs no trackers.
Plus adds eight panels to Insights. Sessions by task, Sessions by hour and Sessions by weekday show where your sessions went and when they ran. Totals and Best day, week and month show your counts. Start and end times shows when your first and last sessions of the day usually fall. Interruptions and The year show your interruptions by month and every day of the last year. Plus also shows the next level of each milestone and how far along you are. Recording sessions and reaching milestones are free either way.
A session is twenty five minutes, a break is five minutes and a long break is twenty five minutes. A set is four sessions. None of the lengths can be changed. End the break stops a break early whenever you have had enough, and in Settings you can set when your working day ends.
Press and hold the hourglass for two and a half seconds, then let go. The session starts when you let go, and if you let go early the hourglass unwinds. If you use switch access, voice control or a screen reader, a separate action winds the hourglass for you.
Winding gives the session weight. A button is free, so it carries no weight, and holding the hourglass for two and a half seconds costs you something. By the time you let go you have already decided to begin, which makes you more invested in the session you start and more likely to follow through. It is built on the research into why starting is the hard part.
It sits under the greeting and shows one item at a time. What just happened comes first, then where you left off if you wrote a line at an interruption. After those come the first day steps for a new account, tips about the timer and facts about your sessions. The arrow shows the next item, and the cross puts away the items that can be put away.
Untimer is made for people who lose track of time while they work, and for people who find it hard to start or to stop. It is designed with that in mind. Some of those people have ADHD and many do not. You do not need a diagnosis to use it.
In a database in Ireland, and only your account can read it. Untimer stores your sessions, your notes, your tasks and your milestones, and it leaves your behaviour alone. From Settings you can download everything as one file, or delete your account and everything in it. This site and the app carry no analytics scripts. The privacy page lists everything that is stored.
An Android app is built and is coming to Google Play. Until then the web app works in a phone browser, and you can add it to your home screen.
Registering takes an email address and a password, or a Google account. Then you wind up the hourglass, start your first session and see your first day drawn on the day strip.
Register for freePlus is $1.99 a month or $19 a year if you want the rest of Insights and Milestones.
