About ZenTimer
ZenTimer is a free meditation timer online: one page that times your practice with bells and asks nothing of you in return. It is built and maintained by one independent developer.
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Who Builds ZenTimer
ZenTimer is built and maintained by one person. There is no company behind it, no marketing team and no outside funding — just an independent developer who sits every morning and got tired of fighting phone alarms and apps that want an account before they will ring a bell.
That is the whole team, and it explains most of the decisions you will meet on this site: no sign-up, no paywall, no pop-ups over the timer, and settings that live in your own browser rather than on a server.
Why ZenTimer Exists
A timer has one job: to hold the start and the end of a sit so that you never have to look at a clock. Most alternatives make that job harder. A phone alarm is either too harsh or too easy to silence. A meditation app often wants an account, then interrupts the sit with notifications. A guided video is pleasant right up to the moment the screen locks.
So ZenTimer is deliberately small. The meditation timer online opens ready to use, the bells are synthesized in your browser so nothing has to download, and every setting you change is remembered locally for next time. The rest of the site answers the questions people actually ask: how long to sit, what a halfway bell is for, and which length suits a beginner.
How the Timer and the Bells Work
The timer is a small piece of JavaScript that you never have to think about. When you press Begin it works out the whole schedule of bells in advance — the opening bell, any interval bells and the closing strikes — and hands each one to the browser audio clock.
Bells are synthesized, not downloaded
Every sound you hear is generated live with the Web Audio API. The closing bowl, for example, blends a warm fundamental near G3 with the uneven overtones of a real bowl, and each tone is doubled with a tiny detune to create the slow beating you hear from a struck bowl. Nothing is downloaded, so the first bell rings the moment you press Begin and the tone sounds the same on every device.
The schedule survives a background tab
Because the bells are scheduled on the audio clock rather than polled by a repeating timer, they still ring on time if you switch to another tab. Closing the tab ends the session; locking a phone can pause it, which is why the timer asks the browser to keep the screen awake and why the longer pages suggest turning auto-lock off.
Your settings stay on your device
Length, mode, bell, interval and volume are saved in your browser local storage. They are not sent anywhere and clearing your browser data removes them. The privacy policy lists every value that is kept, and the privacy page has a button that clears your session history.
How We Write and Check Our Content
The written pages are held to the same rule as the timer: say something useful, say it plainly, and do not dress it up.
- Every instruction on a timer page is tried on the page itself before it is published, on a phone and on a desktop.
- Timings are given as plain numbers — a light chime at 5, 10 and 15 minutes — so you can check them while you sit.
- Where a claim rests on research into meditation, the page says so in general terms rather than pointing at a study you cannot read.
- Corrections are welcome, and they are made in the page itself, with the updated date changed to match.
One line we hold carefully: none of this is medical advice, and the pages say so where it matters. If you are working with anxiety, depression, trauma or any other health condition, a timer is not a substitute for professional care. The medical disclaimer sets out exactly where that line falls.
How ZenTimer Is Paid For
ZenTimer is free. There is no paid tier, no account and no premium features, and nothing on this site is behind a sign-up. To keep it that way we may show advertising on the written pages.
Those ads stay out of the timer itself, they never make a sound, and they are never placed where a stray tap would land on one. What the advertising uses, and how to change your choices, is set out in the privacy policy.
How to Reach Us
Email is the only channel. Feedback, bug reports, corrections and privacy questions all reach the same inbox, and a person reads it.
See Contact ZenTimer for what to include when you write, or use [email protected] directly. We aim to reply within a week.
For how your data is handled, read the privacy policy; for the rules of use, the terms of use.