Does a clock keep time if I switch tabs?

Yes. Everything here counts towards a fixed finishing moment rather than adding up its own ticks, so a tab that a phone froze for four minutes is correct the moment you come back to it. The hidden ones are computed the same way, which is why a backgrounded fuse does not pause.

Will the screen go to sleep mid-round?

No. Every tool in this family asks the browser to hold the screen awake while it is running, so a phone propped in the middle of a table stays lit until the round ends.

Why do some of them hide the time?

Because knowing changes the game. A countdown everybody can read means people wait until four seconds left and then act, which makes the middle of the round dead time. The bomb, the potato, the music and the lights all draw their length in secret inside a range you set.

Can I hear it from across the room?

Yes. Each tool has its own sound with a volume control, and the screen changes at the same moment, so a round ends visibly as well as audibly and nothing depends on hearing it.

★ Beat the clock ★

Timers and timed games

Countdowns and stopwatches you can start in one tap and read from the back of the room.

All 6 tools

Countdown timer

A big countdown for charades, quizzes and classroom activities, with presets and a full screen mode.

Open

Stopwatch

Time a race or a challenge, with laps and splits and a display you can read across a room.

Open

Timer bomb

A fuse of unknown length inside a range you set, with no readout, that goes off while somebody is holding it.

Open

Hot potato

The screen holds the potato and knows whose hands it is in. Pass with a tap, and the holder at the end is out.

Open

Musical chairs

A tune that plays and stops when it wants to, so nobody is standing by the player button. You supply the chairs.

Open

Red light, green light

Go and freeze signals that change at random, in full-screen colour with the word on the screen and a whistle.

Open

A clock the room can read

A timer on a wristwatch times one person. A timer in the middle of a table times everybody, and that changes what it has to be good at. The numbers have to be legible from the far end of a room, the controls have to be hittable without looking, and starting it again has to take one tap, because between rounds is exactly when nobody is paying attention.

Every tool in this family is built to those rules. They go full screen so the numbers and the colours are as large as the device allows, they hold the screen awake while they run, and they are accurate over long periods because they count towards a finishing moment rather than adding up ticks. A round left in a background tab on a phone comes back correct rather than minutes behind.

Clocks you can see

Use the countdown timer when the length is decided in advance: a minute for charades, five for a quiz round, fifteen for the settling task at the start of a lesson. Presets cover the common lengths, and it says clearly when time is up rather than quietly reaching zero.

Use the stopwatch when the length is the answer: a race, a challenge, how long the room takes to tidy up. It keeps laps and splits, so a heat with six runners needs one device rather than six.

Clocks nobody can see

The other four are games rather than instruments, and they all work the same way: you set a range, the real length is drawn inside it the moment the round starts, and nothing on the screen gives it away. The timer bomb burns a fuse and goes off in somebody's hands. The hot potato does the same thing but knows whose turn it is, logs the passes and runs rounds until one player is left.

Musical chairs plays a synthesized tune and stops it at a moment nobody chose, which is the whole reason the game needs a referee and the reason a phone is better at it than a person. Red light, green light is the outdoor version: full-screen colour with the word beside it, changing at random, loud enough to hear from the other end of a field.

What these pages keep

Almost nothing, because there is almost nothing to keep. What is remembered is a handful of settings: the range or the length you last used, whether the sound is on and how loud, and which rules you turned on. Names, where a tool uses them, come from the shared player list and stay on the device.

A length that has been drawn in secret is never stored and never put into a link, so there is nothing to read off the address bar and nothing to recover from the page afterwards. A share link carries the range, which is a pair of numbers, and never anything a person typed.

Questions

Does a clock keep time if I switch tabs?: Yes. Everything here counts towards a fixed finishing moment rather than adding up its own ticks, so a tab that a phone froze for four minutes is correct the moment you come back to it. The hidden ones are computed the same way, which is why a backgrounded fuse does not pause.
Will the screen go to sleep mid-round?: No. Every tool in this family asks the browser to hold the screen awake while it is running, so a phone propped in the middle of a table stays lit until the round ends.
Why do some of them hide the time?: Because knowing changes the game. A countdown everybody can read means people wait until four seconds left and then act, which makes the middle of the round dead time. The bomb, the potato, the music and the lights all draw their length in secret inside a range you set.
Can I hear it from across the room?: Yes. Each tool has its own sound with a volume control, and the screen changes at the same moment, so a round ends visibly as well as audibly and nothing depends on hearing it.

Other families

Tabletop and role-play

Dice you roll on the screen for the nights when the real ones are nowhere to be found.

See them

Play

Puzzles for one person and one screen, with a fresh one every day and hundreds more on demand.

See them

Printables

Make it, print it, take it to the table. Bingo, word searches, charades cards, hunts, crosswords and seating charts.

See them

Every family is listed on the tools page.