20 minute meditation timer
A bell every 10 min for 20 min, 2 bells in all. Starts with 10 sec to settle in.
Space start/pause R reset Esc stop
Settings
A bell every 10 min for 20 min, 2 bells in all. Starts with 10 sec to settle in.
01
What this one is for
A 20 minute meditation timer matches the length that turns up again and again in practice instructions. Transcendental Meditation teaches twenty minutes twice a day as a standard, and twenty to twenty-five minutes is a common sitting period in many Zen and Vipassana settings, though the specifics vary a great deal between teachers and lineages. Nobody arrived at twenty by measurement; it seems to be roughly where a sit stops being brief and stays comfortable without training.
This preset rings at ten minutes as well as at the end. The middle bell is a posture check, not an instruction to do something new. Notice where you have slumped, let the spine come back up, unclench the jaw, drop the shoulders, then carry on with whatever you were doing. Ten minutes in is about when the body starts giving way.
If twenty feels like a stretch, it probably is at first, and the second half is where the restlessness shows up. That is the part worth sitting through rather than shortening. Ten seconds to settle, a bell, ten minutes, a bell, ten more, a bell.
02
Good for
- A full-length daily sit once ten minutes feels short
- Matching the twenty-minute convention in many practices
- Morning and evening sits, twice a day
- A sit long enough to need a posture correction halfway
03
How it runs
A bell every 10 min for 20 min, 2 bells in all. Starts with 10 sec to settle in. Press Start, or hit Space. The digits turn green while a work block runs and grey on rest.
The only sound is one soft bell: at the start, at each interval, and at the end. No ticks before it. Mute with the speaker button for a silent sit. The screen stays on while the timer runs.
Change anything in Settings under the timer. The last setup you used on this page is remembered in your browser.
Questions people ask
- What does the bell sound like?
- A single soft tone generated by the browser, the same one at ten minutes and at the end. It is not a recorded singing bowl. Every bell here is one strike, so you never have to work out whether a sound meant start or stop.
- Does it keep the screen on?
- Yes while the page is in front, using the Wake Lock API with an inline fallback for browsers without it. Dim the brightness manually before you start; the wake lock keeps the screen awake but will not make it darker.
- Can I change the interval?
- Yes, in Settings. Set the bell interval to 20 minutes for start and end only, or to 5 for a bell every five. The total stays at twenty unless you change that too.
- Will it sound if the phone locks?
- The timing stays right, because nothing counts ticks and the position is recalculated from the clock. The bell only plays while the page is open, so keep the tab in front for the whole sit.