WorkshopTimers.com
A big fullscreen countdown timer for workshops, design sprints, meetings and classrooms, built to be read from the back of a room or over a Zoom or Teams screen share. It also does stopwatch, clock and Pomodoro modes. Use it at workshoptimers.com.
The whole app is one HTML file (index.html, about 480 KB with its fonts embedded) plus a small service worker (sw.js) that lets it open offline. There is no build step, no framework, no account and no server of our own.
Where your data goes
Everything you set up (duration, label, theme, colours, logo, sounds, language) is stored in your browser's localStorage on your device and never sent to us. The keys are wt_state_v3 (settings), wt_run_v1 (a running or paused timer, so a refresh doesn't lose it), wt_logo_v1, wt_font_v1, wt_license_v1 and wt_onboarded_v1.
You can take your setup with you: Settings → Your settings file saves it as workshop-timer-settings.json and loads it back on another computer. The file holds your settings and logo; it leaves out your licence key and any font you uploaded.
There are no analytics, no tracking cookies and no ads, and nothing is loaded from third-party servers. The app only talks to the network in two cases. GitHub Pages serves the page and, like any web host, logs access data such as your IP address. If you buy Pro and paste a licence key, the key and the label "Workshop Timer · activated" with the date go to Dodo Payments, the payment provider, to check it. Voice alerts prefer speech voices that run on your device. The full privacy policy has the details.
Free and Pro
Free: the timer, all four modes, three themes, all eight end sounds, voice alerts, settings files and every keyboard shortcut. A one-time Pro licence ($9.99, shown in your local currency at checkout by Dodo Payments) adds the other 20 themes and their colour variants, the font picker with font upload, your own accent and background colours, and your own logo. It also comes with a downloadable copy of the timer and a guide that lets you change that copy with any AI. One licence is for one person on up to 5 devices; a Team licence ($39) covers up to 5 people. Until sales open, the app shows Pro as coming soon and you can preview any theme for 15 seconds.
Once unlocked on a device, Pro keeps working offline; it is only removed if Dodo positively reports the key as invalid. To start selling, put the Dodo checkout links in BUY_URL (Pro) and TEAM_BUY_URL (Team) near the top of the script in index.html. The Pro download is built outside this repository with scripts/build_pro.py and is never committed here.
Run your own copy
Download index.html and sw.js, put them in the same folder, and either open index.html in a browser or serve the folder from any static host for your own use. Nothing else is needed. The service worker only registers over https:// or localhost. The licence below does not let you offer the app to others as a hosted service or unlock Pro without a licence.
Tests
tests/ holds browser tests that run the real page in headless Chromium: every theme and mode, a timer surviving a refresh, the settings file round trip, what free users get, licence checks against mocked Dodo responses, keyboard and screen-reader basics, and the legal pages. GitHub Actions runs them on every push, and the site is only published to GitHub Pages when they all pass. To run them yourself:
pip install -r tests/requirements.txt
playwright install chromium
pytest
Licence
The code is source-available under the Elastic License 2.0. You can read, run, copy and change it, including at work. You can't offer it to other people as a hosted or managed service, and you can't get around the Pro licence-key features. Pro buyers also receive the right to change their own copy with any tool, under the terms in their bundle.
Versions published before 24 October 2026 were released under the MIT licence and stay under it. The embedded fonts are separate works under the SIL Open Font License; FONTS.md lists each one with its copyright, and the shader code in index.html keeps its own MIT notice.
Keyboard
Space start/pause · R reset · F fullscreen · T next theme · M mute · ↑↓ ±1 min · ←→ ±10 sec · click the time, or Tab to it and press Enter, to type one (15, 10:30, 1:00:00).
Limitations
- Settings live in one browser. A private window, cleared site data or a different browser starts from scratch unless you load a settings file.
- The first visit needs a network connection; after that, the installed app or a cached page opens offline.
- Browsers block sound until you click or press a key on the page. If you refresh while a timer is running, the countdown carries on, but the end sound may stay silent unless someone touches the page before it finishes.
- Voice alerts are recorded clips in English, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Hindi, Japanese and Chinese; other interface languages hear English. If a clip can't play, the browser's own speech voice takes over. The clips are made with the open Kokoro voice model; see VOICES.md.
- Several themes (Lava, Aurora, Ocean, Orb and others) draw animated WebGL backgrounds that can be slow on old or low-power machines. Time Disc, the default, is light.
- Activating Pro on a new device needs a connection to Dodo Payments, and Dodo enforces a per-key device limit.
- The legal pages have not had a lawyer's review; the Impressum, AGB and Widerruf pages are still templates.
- There are no automated tests yet.
Contact
Bugs and questions: [email protected]. WorkshopTimers.com is made by Jeffrey Humble in Berlin; more of his projects are at pigrosoft.com.
