READY
READY
Fifty minutes is the block most students settle on once they stop trying to study for four hours at a stretch. It is long enough to get through a full problem set or a chapter with notes, and short enough that the end is always in sight, which is what stops the middle of a session turning into re-reading the same paragraph.
The evidence for spaced, bounded study is old and unglamorous: the same total hours spread over blocks with real gaps produce better recall than the same hours run together. The timer is not motivation, it is the boundary that makes spacing happen.
The tip that changes results most: end each block by writing, from memory, the three things it covered. Not copying: closing the book and writing. Retrieval is what moves material into the kind of memory an exam can reach, and two minutes of it is worth more than another ten minutes of reading.
Set the block, press start, and put the phone in a drawer. When it rings, stand up. Ten minutes away is part of the method, not a reward for finishing.
Long enough to get past the setup, short enough to see the end: fifty minutes suits most people. Twenty-five is better for material you are avoiding, ninety for work you are already deep in.
No, and deliberately. There is no account and no history here. Tracking hours tends to become the goal, and hours are the input, not the result.
Add the length to the address, like /study-timer?t=25m or ?t=90m, or open one of the fixed pages. The countdown works the same either way.
The button beside the sound control lifts the countdown into a small always-on-top window, so the reading keeps the screen and the block keeps a corner of it. That is the useful shape for studying from something on the same machine. The button appears only where the browser supports it: Chrome, Edge and Firefox on a desktop can, Safari and phone browsers cannot.