Timer by LogicFire.app

The idea

Most timers count hours. This one counts runs: the unbroken stretch between starting the clock and your attention going somewhere else. Your average run, shown on the chart every day, is the number to watch, because it is the one that grows.

You use it in three moves: pick a length, start, and press one button the moment your focus breaks. Everything else here — breaks, subjects, groups, the charts — supports those three moves without adding to them.

Notes in the margin explain the reasoning behind each design decision. Skip them if you only want the steps.

Your first session

1. Open timer.logicfire.app. No sign-up needed: signed out, your runs are kept in this browser, and if you make an account later they move into it (chapter 10).
2. Choose a length under the clock: 15, 25, 30, 45 or 60 minutes, or Custom.
3. Press Start focus, or Space.
4. Work. Switching to your notes or another tab is fine; the clock keeps counting.
5. The moment your attention goes — a message, a coffee, a rabbit hole — press I got distracted (Space or D). That stretch is logged and the clock stops.
6. When you are back, press Start focus again. Reach the end of the length and a short chime marks a full run.

The disc

Beside the clock, a disc shows the time left as a wedge that shrinks clockwise toward 0 at the top. It is grey while you choose a length, blue while you focus and orange on a break: the same colours the record uses for focus and rest. The face is fixed at 60 minutes, so 25 minutes is always the same size of wedge; longer runs use a 120-minute face.

The disc also comes on its own, as a visual timer to put on a screen for a class, a meeting or a stream. Any length from 1 minute to 2 hours has its own address, such as /visual-timer/25, and nothing there is recorded.

While the clock is running

The timer takes the whole screen; today’s numbers, the record and your group wait below it, one scroll away. +5 minutes adds five minutes to this session only, up to six hours. End session stops the clock and logs what you did. Stretches under five seconds are not recorded.

The clock keeps counting when the tab is in the background, and resyncs the moment you come back to it.

If it keeps going wrong

Three short stretches in a row — averaging under 40% of your length — and the timer offers a shorter length, usually half. Take it, or press Keep going.

If the page closes mid-session

Signed out, reopening the page offers to count the run so far, if it was over a minute. Signed in, the session lives on the server: reopen within five minutes and it carries on. After five minutes with no sign of you, it closes itself and keeps only the time before you went quiet.

A study day, run through

One morning, start to finish, with what the timer does at each point.

09:00. You pick COMP3300, type “Week 6 tutorial” and press Start focus. You switch to your notes; the clock keeps going. At 09:25 it chimes: a full 25.

09:25. Break 5m. The disc turns orange and counts down. At 09:30 a loud alarm sounds in four short bursts; any key stops it.

09:31. Your phone wins at 09:43. I got distracted logs 12 minutes and stops the clock. The five minutes you then spend away count as nothing — not focus, not rest.

09:48. A good one. Near the end you press +5 minutes and finish 30.

10:29. You hit Start focus by accident and stop it a minute later. That one-minute run drags the whole day.

By the evening the day reads like this:

Removing the misfire takes two presses (chapter 09). The 12-minute run stays: it was real.

Breaks

1. With the clock stopped, press 5m, 10m or 15m beside Break.
2. The disc turns orange and counts the break down, under a note that nothing is counting as focus.
3. When it ends, a loud alarm plays in four bursts. Any key or click stops it early.
4. Back sooner? Press I’m back. Starting focus also ends the break.

Breaks are recorded separately from focus and never added to it. Signed in, the server times them as well, so a break survives a reload. Your group never sees them. To see your rest over time, use the Balance view (chapter 08).

Subjects, tasks and categories

Signed in

Above the task box is a row of subject chips. Pick one before you start; tap it again to unpick. + new adds a subject, such as COMP3300.

The box underneath is for what you are doing right now, like “Week 6 tutorial”. It is optional. Tasks you have used before come back as one-tap chips and suggestions.

If you do not pick a subject

The timer looks in your task for two shapes: a tag such as #thesis, or a course code such as COMP3300 or MATH 1010. Anything else is filed as Untagged.

Categories

1. Switch the record to Topics and press Organise subjects.
2. Add a category — or, if you have none yet, start with University, Certificate or General.
3. Drag subjects into categories. On a phone or with a keyboard, tap a subject, then Move here on the category you want.
4. Click a category’s name to rename it. Delete returns its subjects to Uncategorised.

Your subjects then appear under your category names when you start a session, and the Topics chart groups them with a total for each. Changes save a moment after you stop.

Tasks, subjects and categories are yours alone. Nobody in your group ever sees what you were working on.

Reading the chart

The chart shows one bar per day for the range you pick, from 3 to 180 days. The line above it compares this range with the one before.

Hover over a day, or tab to it, and its consistency appears under the chart with the working. Click a day to list its runs (chapter 09). The strip above the chart shows today: average run, longest, total focused, and how many times you reset.

A tall pale bar means long runs that varied a lot; a short dark one means short runs that were very even. Height and colour answer different questions, so read both.

This week

Under today’s numbers, This week adds up the last seven days, today included: how long you focused, on how many days (a mark for each, filled on the days you focused), your average day, and the change on the seven days before. A smaller week shows in grey, not red. In the simple layout it is one line under the timer, such as This week: 2h 40m across 4 days, once there is something to count.

The consistency score

A number from 0 to 1 for how even your runs were on a day — not how long, and not how many. It takes every pair of runs, divides the shorter by the longer, and averages the results.

With two runs that is simply shortest ÷ longest. With more, an odd run only spoils the pairs it is part of.

A long run lowers the score just as a short one does: the score measures evenness, not effort.

When nothing is hovered, the line under the chart compares your last seven days with the seven before. Days without a score are left out rather than counted as zero, so a rest day never drags the week down.

Your score is private. Your group never sees it.

Other views

The tabs under the range switch what the record shows.

Table

Every number from the chart as text, newest first, including consistency. Click a date to open that day’s runs — the easy way in at 90 or 180 days, where a bar is a pixel wide.

Topics

Signed in: time per subject over the range, grouped by your categories. Organise subjects lives here.

Balance

Focus and rest side by side for each day, with your rest per focused hour.

Total

A running total that only climbs, for focus and for rest. Hover or tab along it for any day.

Fixing a mistake

1. Click the day’s bar on the chart, or its date in the Table view.
2. Runs on … opens below the chart, listing every run with its time, length, how it ended, and what it was for.
3. Find the mistake. The run least like the others is marked: it is the one pulling the score down most.
4. Runs under five minutes have Remove at the end of the row. Press it, then Remove again to confirm.

The day’s average, score, bar colour and totals update at once. Removal is permanent. If a run has no Remove, it is five minutes or longer, and stays.

Accounts and devices

You do not need an account. Signed in, your history follows you between devices, and you get subjects, groups and the extension.

Sign in, or create an account, with email

1. Press Sign in, top right.
2. Type your email and press Continue with email.
3. Type the 6-digit code from the email; on most phones you can tap to fill it in. It works once, for 10 minutes.
4. New here? Pick a handle: 3 to 24 characters from a–z, 0–9, hyphen and underscore. A display name is optional. Already have an account? You are signed straight in.

Account → Email adds, changes or removes the address. It is only ever used for sign-in codes.

With a passkey instead

Sign in with a passkey, then pick your account; there is no handle to type. To create an account with one, open New here? Create an account with a passkey, choose a handle, press Create account and confirm with Windows Hello, Touch ID, your phone or a security key. Save the ten recovery codes it shows.

Add another device

Sign in on the new device with your existing passkey — most browsers offer “use a phone or another device” — then press Add a passkey so it has its own. You cannot remove your last passkey.

What you did before signing up

Signed out, every run is kept in this browser. Create an account and they move into it automatically, so trying the timer first costs nothing. Sign in to an account you already had and it asks first, once, in case it is a shared computer. Carried-over runs count in your own chart, table and totals, show as before sign-up in a day’s list, and never count in a group.

Lost your device?

If your account has an email, just use Continue with email. Otherwise, Sign in → Lost your device?, and enter a recovery code. Each code works once. Once you are in, add a new passkey straight away.

Confirming with your passkey

A few things ask you to confirm it is you, unless you signed in within the last ten minutes: New recovery codes, removing a passkey, changing your email, and deleting the account. With a passkey you touch it; without one, you type a code sent to your email.

Hiding ads

Signed in, Settings → Hide ads turns ads off on every device, for now. With ads hidden, the page does not load any ad code at all. It takes effect the next time the page loads.

More than one device

One session runs at a time across all your devices. Start on your laptop, open the timer on your phone, and it shows that session with Move it here. Moving does not restart anything; the time carries over.

Groups

A group is up to eight people you invite, keeping each other honest.

1. Signed in, find the Group section. Type a name and press Create a group, or paste an invite link or code and press Join.
2. Press Copy invite link and send it to whoever you want in. Opening it shows the group’s name and how full it is. They join by pressing Join, signed in, or after making an account.
3. Leave group whenever you like.

Running a group

• Whoever creates a group owns it. The owner can press Make admin on any member, and Remove from group on anyone.
• Admins can remove members, though not other admins or the owner.
• Removing someone changes the invite link and code, so they cannot rejoin with the old one. Send the new link to anyone still to join.
• If a link went further than you meant, the owner or an admin can press New link. The old link and code stop working; members stay in.
• If the owner leaves or deletes their account, the group passes to the longest-standing admin, or else the longest-standing member.

What members see

• The group’s total focus this week, against last week.
• Each person’s week against their own previous four weeks: average run and how it changed, sessions, and streak.
• Who is mid-session right now, if presence is on.

What they never see

Your tasks, subjects, categories, breaks, or consistency scores.

Presence

Shows who in your group is mid-session, so you can work alongside them. It is on by default and reciprocal: you see others only while they can see you. Turn it off on the Group section.

The Chrome extension

An optional add-on for running a session without keeping the tab open. Sign in on the website once and the extension uses that sign-in. It counts time only while your computer is actually in use — keyboard or mouse — so an idle or locked machine earns nothing.

Your data

Take it with you

Export JSON (everything) and Export CSV (your sessions, for a spreadsheet) are at the bottom of the timer page; Ctrl + S exports too. Signed in, the export comes from the server, so it is complete across devices. Signed out, Import, or dropping an exported file onto the page, restores it.

Delete it

Signed in, Delete this account asks you to type your handle and confirm with your passkey, then removes everything at once.

Backups

The database is backed up every night. Nightly copies are kept for 180 days, and one a month for two years; the monthly copies leave out passkeys and recovery codes. Deleting your account also removes you from every backup, worked through over the nights that follow.

What is logged about visits

Page visits are logged for basic usage numbers. Your full IP address is kept for seven days, then reduced to an anonymous form, and deleted after 90. Your sessions are never part of that log. The privacy page lists everything kept, and for how long.

Settings and shortcuts

Simple or full

Full, the default, shows the timer with today’s numbers, your record and charts, and your group. Simple shows the timer alone. When you create an account you are asked which you want, and pressing either shows it behind the window. Change it any time under Settings → Layout, or press Show today’s numbers and your record under the timer in Simple. Signed in, the choice follows you to every device.

Sound, theme and reading

Top right, ♪ turns all session sounds on or off, including the break alarm, and ◑ cycles the theme between auto, light and dark.

Settings, near the bottom of the page, has button sounds, the OpenDyslexic typeface, text size, line height and letter spacing, and, signed in, Hide ads. This guide follows the same reading settings.

The clock and every figure are set in its monospaced cut, so digits never change width as they tick.

Shortcuts do nothing while you are typing in a box.

Quick reference

Common questions

My run did not count. Stretches under five seconds are not recorded. Signed in, a session that hears nothing from you for five minutes closes itself.

My score says n/a. That day has one run.

I cannot find Remove. The run is five minutes or longer. Open the day by clicking its bar, or its date in Table.

Sign-in hangs in Edge after the prompt. In Windows Settings → Accounts → Passkeys → Advanced options, turn off Microsoft Password Manager and leave “Save passkeys to this Windows device” on.

I lost my phone. Sign in with Continue with email if your account has an email; otherwise Lost your device? with a recovery code. Then add a new passkey.

The code email has not arrived. Give it a minute and check spam or promotions; the subject starts with the code. Send a new code works after 30 seconds, and only the newest code is valid.