Timers and Stopwatches

Experiments Surveys & forms

You can show a visible countdown timer or an elapsed-time stopwatch to participants using the **`timer`** column.

Basic timer

Set timer to a duration in minutes/seconds or milliseconds:

timer = 2m30s
timer = 90000

A countdown appears on screen. When it reaches zero the trial (or the group of timed trials) ends.

Timer options

Options are added as comma-separated values in the same column:

Option	Effect
skip	When the timer expires, all remaining trials in the timed group are skipped
hide	Hide the timer display (countdown still runs)
stopwatch	Count up instead of down
topRight	Position: top-right corner
topLeft	Position: top-left corner
bottomRight	Position: bottom-right corner
bottomLeft	Position: bottom-left corner
center	Position: centre of screen
s / m / l / xl	Timer display size
[red] last 10s	Change timer color to red when 10 seconds remain

Example combining options:

timer = 3m, skip, topRight, l, [orange] last 30s

Multi-trial timers

A single timer can span multiple consecutive trials. Assign a label to the first trial’s timer, then reference that label on subsequent trials:

# First trial in the timed group
timer = A: 2m30s, skip, topRight

# Middle trials: no duration needed, just the label
timer = A

# Last trial in the group: also just the label
timer = A

All rows sharing the label A are part of the same timed sequence. The countdown starts when the first A trial begins and ends when either the time runs out or the last A trial is finished.

Caution

If skip is enabled and the timer expires, all remaining trials with the same label are skipped, not just the current trial. The participant jumps to the first trial after the timed group.

Tip

Timer labels act as explicit grouping for randomisation purposes: trials with the same timer label are treated as a block and kept together. This explicit grouping supersedes any implicit groupings (e.g. from consecutive identical rows). If your randomisation is not behaving as expected, check whether timer labels are splitting your intended groups.

Form surveys and timers

For type = form trials, all questions on the same page are automatically considered part of the same timed section, even without matching timer labels. Set timer on the first question row of each page and it will apply to all questions on that page.

Note

This implicit grouping means that if any question on a page has a timer, the entire page is timed. You do not need to add the timer label to every question row on the same page.

Stopwatch mode

Display an elapsed timer (counting up) by including the stopwatch option:

timer = 5m, stopwatch, hide

In this example the stopwatch is running but hidden. Results will still record the time taken.

Next steps

• Timing Parameters: control individual trial timing
• Randomisation: timer labels interact with block randomisation
• Project Flow and Trial Management: breaks and trial grouping