20 Second Timer

Twenty seconds: one ring per second

This is the cleanest dial on the site. Twenty seconds over twenty rings means exactly one ring falls each second, so the face is a second hand you can read from across the room. If you have never watched a radial countdown before, this is the length to watch first.

The hand wash

Twenty seconds is the length public health guidance gives for washing your hands with soap: long enough to cover palms, backs, between the fingers, thumbs and nails. Most people stop well short of it without a clock. Prop the phone by the sink, tap start as the water runs, and scrub until the chime. Small children get on with it better when they can see the rings emptying instead of being told to keep going.

One round of 4-7-8

The 4-7-8 breathing pattern is a four second inhale, a seven second hold, and an eight second exhale. That is nineteen seconds, so a twenty second dial holds one full round with a second to spare. Run it four times in a row for a short reset. The rings help most on the hold, which is the part people cut short.

Twenty seconds of work

Twenty seconds is the work interval in the original Tabata protocol, and it is about as long as most people can hold an all-out effort. The Tabata page runs eight rounds of twenty on and ten off for you. On this plain dial, twenty seconds suits a single hard effort: a max-effort bar hang, a sprint on a bike, a burst of jumping rope.

Games and counts

Hide and seek runs on a count to twenty in most households, and a dial the seeker can watch settles arguments about who counted too fast. Charades and drawing games sometimes use a twenty second speed round for the last clue. The 20 second card also has a matching video, so a group can watch the countdown play on a big screen with the sound up.

Nearby lengths

A longer hold or a longer rest wants the 30 second dial; a quick count wants 15 seconds. The full range is on the timers page.