Quiz round timer

How to project the timer

If you're hosting at a venue with a projector or large screen, you have two clean projection options. Projection mode strips the page to just the countdown plus a discreet Start/Pause pair — perfect when you're casting this tab to a TV or projector and want the audience to see digits, not buttons. The Start/Pause sit at low opacity below the digits until your cursor moves near them, so they're available to the host without distracting the room. Fullscreen goes one step further and uses the whole browser window. The two work together: projection mode + fullscreen gives you the cleanest possible view, digits at 36vw, no chrome anywhere.

To bring the rest of the controls back, press Esc or click the small Show controls button that appears in the bottom-right corner. Fullscreen exits the same way. For a tablet on a stand or a phone propped against a glass, the default in-page size works fine at three or four metres — projection mode just makes the digits bigger.

How long should a quiz round be?

The honest answer is: shorter than you think. A pub-quiz room hits dead air the moment teams finish discussing and start waiting. Most experienced hosts run a tight cadence:

• Quick general-knowledge rounds: 60–90 seconds per question. Teams who know it answer fast; teams who don't aren't going to come up with it in another 30 seconds anyway.
• Picture rounds: 30 seconds per image, projected all at once on a single sheet, with a 5–10 minute window to fill in the whole answer card.
• Wordplay or cryptic rounds: 2 minutes per question — these reward longer thinking.
• Music rounds: two play-throughs of the clip, then 30 seconds of writing time.
• The whole-round timer: 8–12 minutes works for a 10-question round at quiz-night cadence.

If you're new to hosting, lean toward shorter and run it lively. You can always extend the next round if the previous one felt rushed.

Sound: why we beep at 10 seconds

The two-tone end chime tells teams to put pens down (or fingers off keyboards if you're hosting virtually). The single 10-second warning gives teams a chance to look up from their discussion, look at the timer, and finalise an answer instead of being surprised by the cutoff. Both sounds use the Web Audio API at low volume so they're audible but not jarring in a small room. Turn sound off if you're embedding the timer in a presentation that already has its own click-tracks, or if you'd rather call time yourself.

Why we built our own rather than embedding an iframe

Most "timer for quiz nights" results on Google are YouTube videos. Those work, but they have three problems: ad pre-rolls steal the attention you want on the question, the play/pause UX needs the host to click out of a separate tab, and there's no fullscreen mode that hides the YouTube chrome. This page has none of that — it's a single HTML page, no ads, no chrome, instant start.

Other uses for this timer

You don't have to be hosting a quiz to find this useful:

• Exam practice: set the round to exam time and run a mock paper. Better than a kitchen timer because the visible countdown matches what students see during the actual exam.
• Classroom group work: teachers, run a 5-minute group brainstorm or a 3-minute "explain this concept to your neighbour" round and the visible timer keeps the room moving.
• Tabletop and board games: impose a turn limit on indecisive players. Great for big games like Cluedo or Risk.
• Cooking timers / brewing: the big tabular digits work well from across a kitchen.
• Standups and meetings: 5 minutes per agenda item makes a meeting actually end.

Pair it with the rest of the host's kit

Before the night, run the team generator to split your guest list into balanced teams. During the night, keep the tiebreaker library open in another tab for the inevitable draw. Print the host kit PDF for scoresheets you can hand out at the door. Full strategy: the quiz night hosting guide.