How to use the meditation timer
- Set the length. Tap a length from 5 to 60 minutes, type any number from 1 to 180 in the custom field, or choose Open to sit until you end it yourself. The quick-start sessions at the top of the settings set everything at once: a 5-minute breathing meditation, a 15-minute body scan, 20 minutes with a bell every 5, a sleep session with rain, and more.
- Choose your bells under Bells, timing and voice. Singing bowl, temple bell, tingsha, gong, wood block or soft chime, struck 1 to 3 times at the start and the end (or not at all). Press ▶ to hear one first. An interval bell can mark every few minutes with a different sound.
- Press Start (or Space, or tap the scene). With Settle in first, a short countdown gives you time to get comfortable before the first bell.
- Sit. Pause if you’re interrupted, add a minute with +1 min, or end early with End. When the time is up the bell rings, the soundscape fades out, and the session is added to Your practice.
Choose Hide the clock if watching the minutes distracts you, or Time elapsed to count up instead of down. Full screen fills a laptop, tablet or TV with the scene and nothing else.
Bells, interval bells and soundscapes
Every sound is synthesized in your browser rather than played from a recording. The singing bowl is built from its real, uneven overtones, each in a slightly detuned pair, so it beats with the slow “wah-wah” of a struck bowl and fades over about twenty seconds. The temple bell has the low hum and minor-third ring of a cast bell, the tingsha the bright shimmer of two small cymbals, and the gong a deep bloom. The wood block is short and dry: a good interval sound that marks time without ending the mood.
Soundscapes play under the bells with their own volume: rain, ocean waves that swell and wash back, a stream, wind, a crackling campfire, night crickets, brown and pink noise, or a low drone. They fade in at the start and out after the end bell. Tap one to hear a few seconds of it.
The bells are scheduled ahead on your device’s audio clock, so they ring on time even when you switch to another tab. The page also asks the screen to stay on during a session.
Guided meditations
For some guidance, pick a meditation. Its prompts are spread over the time you chose: fewer, further apart in a short session, and more in a long one.
- Breath awareness: rest your attention on the breath and come back each time the mind wanders. That return is the practice.
- Body scan: move your attention slowly from the feet to the top of the head, noticing each area without trying to change it. Best with 15 minutes or more.
- Loving-kindness: silently offer simple wishes (“may you be safe, may you be well”) to yourself, someone you love, a stranger, someone difficult, and finally everyone.
- Noting: name whatever catches your attention with one soft word, like hearing, thinking or itching, then let it go.
- Sleep wind-down: slow, quiet prompts for bedtime. Pair it with No bell so nothing wakes you, and a rain or night soundscape.
Prompts appear softly on the scene. Turn on Read them aloud (under Bells, timing and voice) to hear them in a voice installed on your device. Voices that would send the text to an online service are never used, so the list depends on your system.
Scenes
Ring is a quiet countdown circle that marks each interval bell and glows gently at six breaths a minute. Aurora drifts northern lights across a starry sky, Night sky turns slowly like a long-exposure photo with the odd shooting star, Candle flickers softly, and Ripples sends a ripple across still water every ten seconds and a bigger one with every bell. Six palettes change the mood, from deep Night to a light Sand.
Share your timer or embed it
When a session ends, or you press End after a minute or more, Share result gives you a link that opens a card here with how long you sat and the timer you used. Use this timer sets it up for whoever opens it, so your meditation group can sit with the same bells. The link holds the timer’s length and any minutes you added, the time you sat, the settling-in time, the start and end bell with its strikes, the interval bell, the guidance and the soundscape. Volumes, the voice, the scene, the colors and your practice history never go into it.
To put the timer on a website or blog for free, with a link back here, open Embed this on your site under Share and embed: the widget opens with your settings.
Your practice and privacy
Sessions of 20 seconds or more add their minutes to Your practice: your streak of days in a row, today’s minutes, your total and a 20-week calendar, together with any sessions from the breathing exercise. It is all kept in this browser, and nothing is uploaded.
Tips
- Short and regular beats long and rare: five minutes a day builds the habit, and the streak helps.
- New to meditating? Start with the breathing exercise or a 5-minute breath awareness session, and lengthen from there.
- On a phone, turn off the silent switch, set the volume first, and keep the screen on. Phones may pause web audio when the screen locks.
- Want the soundscape without a timer? The white noise generator mixes the same rain, ocean and noise sounds, with a sleep timer.
- Meditating in the dark? Open a black screen on a second display, or choose the Night palette and the Candle scene.