1 hour meditation timer
A bell every 20 min for 1 hr, 3 bells in all. Starts with 10 sec to settle in.
Space start/pause R reset Esc stop
Settings
A bell every 20 min for 1 hr, 3 bells in all. Starts with 10 sec to settle in.
01
What this one is for
A 1 hour meditation timer is retreat territory. An hour on a cushion is not a longer version of ten minutes; it is a different problem, and most of the difficulty is physical rather than mental. Longer sits of roughly this length are common in intensive retreat schedules, though what a given tradition asks for varies widely.
Get the posture sorted before you start, because you will not fix it at minute forty. Hips above knees on a cushion or bench, spine stacked rather than held, hands somewhere they can rest without pulling the shoulders forward. A chair is fine. Legs go numb; numb is usually tolerable and passes when you move, while sharp or shooting pain is a reason to shift position rather than something to sit through.
The bells at twenty and forty minutes split the hour into three, which is enough structure to keep it from becoming featureless. Use them as posture checks, as permission to change legs, or as boundaries between practices. Ten seconds to settle, then one bell at a time.
02
Good for
- Retreat-style sitting at home
- A long weekend sit with three twenty-minute blocks
- Practising at the length an intensive schedule would use
- Sitting with legs that need permission to move at a marked point
03
How it runs
A bell every 20 min for 1 hr, 3 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?
- One soft generated tone, the same at twenty, forty and sixty minutes. It is a synthesised bell, not a recording of a singing bowl, and there is no rising or falling pair to interpret. One strike means one boundary.
- Should I move if my legs go numb?
- Numbness from a folded leg is common and generally passes once you move. Sharp pain is different, and shifting position is the sensible response rather than sitting it out. The bells at twenty and forty are convenient moments to change legs without feeling like you broke the sit.
- Can I change the interval?
- Yes, in Settings. Thirty minutes gives two halves, fifteen gives four quarters, and setting the interval to 60 gives you an hour with nothing but a start and an end bell.
- Will it sound if the phone locks?
- The timing holds up over an hour of a locked or dimmed screen, because position is recalculated from timestamps every time the page wakes. The bell only plays while the page is open, so leave the tab in front for the whole sit.